How Brexit preparation delivered wine bonus for LWC

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 11 August, 2025

LWC Drinks has revealed how Brexit preparations primed the company for the growth of its wine portfolio through and beyond the pandemic, which among other commercial successes also helped land the company a number two slot in last year’s Harpers Top 50 Drinks Wholesalers 2024 listing.

At the Manchester-rooted supplier, which bills itself as the UK's largest indepedent whoelsaler, wine now accounts for some 15.5% of its £850m total annual sales, having fast closed in on the national average for nationwide wholesalers of around 16% wine sales.

Moreover, set against a depressed picture for much of the wine category in the UK, LWC believes it can drive through wines sales of up to 20% of its total sales turnover over the next few years.

Read more: Soho House results show healthy rise in revenue

Speaking to Harpers at the company’s Manchester depot, MD Ebrahim Mukadam outlined how he and his team spotted and took the opportunity ahead of the 31 January 2020 exit from the EU.

“We had prepared for Brexit, and in 2017, 2018 and 2019 we started upping the wine portfolio, while others had run down stocks and couldn’t then meet demand,” he said of the period which – obviously unknown at the time – was also the run up to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“This meant that [when the pandemic came], we had stock because we had prepared for Brexit.”

Emboldened by the rise in sales through those years, Mukadam said that LWC “kept communications open through lockdowns”, not least as the company went into the pandemic with £40m of wine stock across its depots, and £39m in outstanding invoices from accounts.

This support clearly paid off, though, with Mukadam adding that 98% of businesses eventually paid. It also led to a conclusion that wine could be a fertile area of the portfolio for further growth, contrary to a common perception that the category is at best in the doldrums.

This in turn led to the taking on of Frances Bentley as wine buyer, to strengthen wine director Shaun Healey’s team, in April 2022.

“Wine is a product where you can get good margins; if you get the quality of the juice right then people will come back for a second, for a third glass,” said Bentley, who also revealed how the LWC wine team approaches its customers.

“We do things differently to other wine suppliers, we buy on behalf of customers, and operate across all on-trade… it has to be customer-led, we have to give them a really good reason to trade over to and up to wine.”

With a big focus on the 60,000 freehold pubs in the UK, Bentley says that wine allows the conversation “to move away from the price of Smirnoff”, potentially then allowing for more margin for both suppliers and on-trade retailer, while giving the customers a drink that remains popular – if and when the offer is right.

To this end LWC has doubled the number of people in its wine team in just three years, with innovations such as differing formats, own labels (pictured), a new 8% range and a willingness to source just one bottle of a given label for a customer all part of an energetic and evidently engaging mix.

Harpers will be publishing a more in-depth look at LWC’s wine side in our September issue.

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