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PRESS RELEASE: 26.01.2011 Travellers’ private imports of alcohol about the same as last yearAccording to TNS Gallup’s weekly interviews, travellers’ private imports of alcoholic beverages in 2010 totalled 64.8 million litres, representing an increase of 3 per cent on 2009. Travellers imported 30 per cent more long drinks into Finland than in 2009. The import of wines increased by 17 per cent and ciders by 4 per cent. Travellers’ imports of beer fell by 7 per cent. Imports of intermediary products (fortified wines) decreased by 5 per cent and strong alcoholic beverages by 4 per cent. When translated into pure alcohol, travellers’ private imports in 2010 were half a per cent higher than in 2009. All in all, Finnish travellers imported a total of about 7.9 million litres of alcohol into Finland during 2010, which represents about 15 per cent of total consumption. Of all the alcohol imported by travellers, half was in the form of strong alcoholic beverages. The majority of alcoholic beverages imported by Finns are still purchased either on ships or in Estonia. 87 per cent of beer comes from Estonia or ships. This figure is 76 per cent for strong alcoholic beverages and 70 per cent for wines. The volume of beer and strong alcoholic beverages imported from ships or Estonia in 2010 remained the same as in 2009, although imports from other sources declined. According to TNS Gallup’s annual surveys, both the acquisition of smuggled alcoholic beverages and home brewing and distillation have been declining during the past decade, and this trend continued in 2010. Smuggled alcohol and legal and illegal home brewing and distillation account for just under two per cent of total alcohol consumption. In 2010, the total number of cigarettes imported by travellers fell by almost a fifth on 2009 and was noticeably lower than at any time since monitoring began in 2006. In 2010, travellers stated that they’d imported 598 million cigarettes and 6.8 million boxes of snuff into Finland. The monitoring of snuff imports began in 2009, when 5.7 million boxes were imported. More than two fifths of all cigarettes were purchased in on-ship stores. A significant number of cigarettes were also imported from Estonia and Russia. 23 per cent of travellers returning to Finland stated that they’d brought back some kind of tobacco product. 18 per cent had imported cigarettes and 3 per cent snuff. One third brought cigarettes exclusively for someone else’s use and 13 per cent for both their own and someone else’s use. This means that Finns imported at least 200 million cigarettes for another person’s use in 2010. Almost 5 billion cigarettes are sold in Finland each year. Private imports of alcoholic beverages into Finland, million
litres
The survey on travellers’ private imports was ordered by Alko Ltd, the Alcoholic Beverages Industries' Association, the Federation of Finnish Commerce, the Finnish Tourism and Restaurant Industries Federation (MaRa), the Federation of the Brewing and Soft Drinks Industry, the Finnish Grocery Trade Association, the National Supervisory Authority For Welfare and Health (VALVIRA), the Association of Finnish Alcoholic Beverage Suppliers, the National Institute For Health and Welfare (THL), the Ministry of Finance and the Finnish Tobacco Industries' Federation. Data was collected on a weekly basis by conducting 500 telephone interviews. For more information, contact: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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