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Drop In Molasses Price Unlikely To Help Liquor Makers Much, Som Distilleries Says

Som Distilleries will clock around 50 percent growth in sales in the current financial year.

A bartender pours alcohol into a measuring cup at a bar. (Photographer: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg)  
A bartender pours alcohol into a measuring cup at a bar. (Photographer: Sanjit Das/Bloomberg)  

Prices of molasses, a sugar byproduct that’s used for making alcohol, have fallen by more than half so far this year. Yet, that wouldn’t help makers of whisky to rum much as most of them have shifted to grains, J K Arora, chairman and managing director at Som Distilleries & Breweries Ltd., said.

Molasses prices, measured by the Wholesale Price Index, have dropped 55 percent so far this year, Bloomberg data showed. The impact of this drop on Som Distilleries & Breweries won’t be more than 5 percent, Arora told BloombergQuint in an interview.

The Bhopal-based alcohol maker expects to post a 50 percent year-on-year growth in sales in the ongoing financial year, he said. The company is the manufacturer of Hunter beer, Blue Cube gin and Fox vodka among other brands.

The company has has gained 20 percent in the past one month, compared with 1.6 percent gain in the S&P BSE Sensex Index.

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