Scottish company to bottle Glendale whisky in Russia

Russian business daily Vedomosti says the East Kilbride blender will ship enough whisky to fill 70,000 bottles a month starting by the end of the year.

The Scottish Government - under then First Minister Nicola Sturgeon - urged businesses to sever business ties with Russia after Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. 

In response major producers, such as Johnnie Walker-maker Diageo, gradually pulled out of Russia.

Despite this informal embargo, large quantities of both bottled and bulk Scotch have continued to make their way to Russia’s growing booze market.

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Demand for spirits, including whisky, has boomed in the country since full-scale war began. 

Blair McDougall, a Labour MP who has worked on democracy projects in the former Soviet Union, called on Campbell Meyer to drop their deal.

“As we have just marked 1000 days of brutality by Russia towards Ukraine, it is deeply disappointing that Scottish firms are still doing business with Putin’s Russia.”

 “It is all the more galling to see Scotland’s national drink part of this. We should be clear: Russia is an enormous criminal enterprise run by a gangster class. It is simply not possible to take one part of the economy and separate it out from the war economy that is threatening Ukraine and the whole of Europe.”

 “This company should think again whether their profit margin is worth the reputational damage of doing business in a pariah state.”  

Campbell Meyer did not respond to repeated requests for comment from this newspaper. It is not known how much its Russian deal is worth. 

The firm is not a member of the Scotch Whisky Association, which has repeatedly stressed that direct exports by its members to Russia have fallen since 2022.

Russian alcohol importer, producer and bottler Luding Group quietly announced its arrangement with Campbell Meyer last month. 

It will bottle Glendale at a factory in the historic city of Kolomna, south-east of Moscow. It has not revealed how much it will charge for the whisky but signalled that the product would be in the “economy” range, according to Russian media reports. Imported bottles of Glendale are currently being sold in Russia for around 1200 rubles - which is just over £9.

Luding on its website heaped praise on Campbell Meyer as the very “model of a traditional of family business” .

“The company was founded at the end of the 18th century and has been producing several types of whisky since then,” the distributor said. “Today the business is one of very few in Scotland still managed by descendants of its founder.”

Campbell Meyer makes no such claim on its own website. It describes itself as an “independent company based in the heart of Scotland” with “more than 50 years experience in our trade".

In fact, the firm was set up, under another name, at the end of the 1980s by Alexander Bulloch, a grocer from Tighnabruiach in Argyll who made a fortune in the whisky trade. 

The Bulloch family sold up in 2007.  Campbell Meyer, its parent company JG Distillers and related entities, are all ultimately owned by a firm called Strathord Limited. 

This firm is registered at a PO Box in Tortola, capital of the British Virgin Islands, a Caribbean tax haven and British overseas territory. 

Strathord, whose only meaningful trail on the internet is a brief mention in the Panama Papers, is managed by a veteran accountant in Guernsey. 

The Herald on Sunday asked Campbell Meyer who controlled Strathord Limited. It did not respond to our question. 

Juliet Swann, Nations & Regions Manager at the UK wing of Transparency International, said: “UK companies must disclose who ultimately controls them, yet too often it's not their real owners you see on the public record. 

“The opacity provided by the UK's offshore financial centres, such as the BVI and Guernsey, provide a smokescreen for those seeking to keep their identity secret.

“Were there greater corporate transparency in the BVI and the Channel Islands, and tougher enforcement of company law here, we'd know much more about this East Kilbride based company which seems to be doing business with a Russian firm.”

Luding Group is almost as old as Campbell Meyer, having been set up in the early 1990s by two ethnic Armenian entrepreneurs based in Russia. 

The firm, initially a wine importer, has grown in to one of the biggest players in the Russia alcohol market. It has suffered some drama over the years. A senior executive, the head of communications in its Moscow office, was found shot dead in his car in the Russian capital in 2010. Later police uncovered a kidnap plot against the daughter of one of the firm’s founders.

Luding last month appointed a new executive director, Garegin Shakhmelikian, who local media said had experience working for major global spirits companies like Diageo and Pernod Ricard.

The company, which has a sophisticated and sprawling sales network, has been sounding upbeat in recent months. Russian authorities over recent decades had succeeded in reducing alcohol consumption with a series of measures - including a minimum price for vodka later adopted by Scotland. However, new data strongly suggests Russians have started drinking more since the pandemic and then the conflict in Ukraine. 

Government data for January to October show sales of 1.84 billion litres of alcohol, the highest since the current recording system was set up in 2017. 

Sales of imported spirits have now recovered from the initial slump after Russian soldiers crossed in to Ukraine in February 2022. 

In January-September of this year official Russian imports of whisky - not just Scotch - were only 1.2 per cent lower than in the same period of 2021, according to industry analysis revealed by Moscow business paper Kommersant. 

The Russian government this summer announced it would double tariffs on “hard liquor from unfriendly countries” - such as the UK - in retaliation for Western sanctions.

Most of the bigger European and North American producers have dismantled their Russian distribution networks. But this has not stopped their brands reaching supermarket shelves through companies like Luding.

Russian distilleries and bottlers have also ramped up their own production of whisky, including their own premium brands. Some alcohol companies are making a product that the Scotch Whisky Association believes mimics a Scottish product. Others say their bottles contain Scotch bought in bulk. The Herald asked Campbell Meyer whether it provided its whisky to any other clients in Russia. It did not respond.

Glendale is one of several brands the company offers from its East Kilbride base. The Scotch is currently being offered in Kenya where it is described as the smoothest affordable whisky you will ever taste.