The alcoholic beverage industry is facing an existential threat. Profits are declining for the mult-billion naira companies like Nigerian Breweries and Guiness. The impact of business decline for these big brands is already telling on the entertainment industry as evident in the lack of sponsorship for such shows as the Gulder Ultimate Search, Star Trek, Maltina Dance All and many others.
These poor business outlook in the alcoholic industry is not the result of decrease of consumers of alcohol, but the emergence of an alternative intoxicant called Shekpe, a loose name for the many locally brewed gin drinks in the Nigerian market.
Shekpe, originally called Ogogoro, has many variants in the market. They are affordable and offers more levels of high, but poses severe risk to the liver and vital organs of the body. Ogogoro is a drink extracted locally from palm trees which is consumed for pleasure and used for such rituals during marriage and burial, in some places, even naming a child goes with Ogogoro.
But Ogogoro is very harsh to the taste bud unlike Shekpe, which is more like the counterfeit of the Alomo Bitters, a herbal based alcoholic drink produced in Ghana by Kasapreko. Alomo is popular not only in Ghana but also in Nigeria, Togo, Ivory Coast South Africa and Burkina Faso.
But its popularity has led to a lot of counterfeiting of its product by cheap brewed brands claiming to have the same herbal and alcoholic mixture as Alomo. In Nigeria, Shekpe, has taken the place of Alomo because the many products under this generic name also claim to have the same bitter ingredients as Alomo, a herbal mixtures which reduces the impact of sugar in the body.
Shekpe offers the same intoxication at a very low cost, hence their preference by many consumers, even though it comes with a higher health risk. But the market for this products which come in satchet, plastics and bottle packs have left the big brands bleeding.
Nigerian Breweries, for instance, has never had it so rough with the influx of these cheap intoxicants into the alcoholic market. In 2019, the brewery giant reported a profit after tax of N16 billion. This was a far cry from its average profit, which averages at N40 billion.
Guinness Nigeria Plc has also not been having it easy. In its 2019 result, it only managed to get a N3.56 billion profit, a shortfall of N1.08 billion from the 2018 operations. The invention of Shekpe has created a crisis for the big breweries who seem to have lost the patronage of the low income class. These category of consumers, although with low purchasing power, make up the majority of alcohol consumers. Shekpe is also easily available for the consumer who could easily purchase them in kiosks, beer parlour, restaurants or by a hawker.
Their aggressive distribution network has become the selling niche for these products which is relatively cheaper than the bottled or can beers but whose production standards remain untrustworthy
