Models pose with Shinsegae L&B's sparkling liquor product "Lets" at a hotel in Seoul on March 30. Courtesy of Shinsegae L&B

By Kim Jae-heun

Local brewers are competing to secure an upper hand in the rapidly growing sparkling liquor market as the summer heat wave intensifies, according to company officials Monday.

Currently, HiteJinro is leading the market but Oriental Brewery (OB) and Shinsegae Liquor & Beverage (Shinsegae L&B) are catching up by introducing new brands.

Sparkling liquor looks and tastes just like ordinary beer, but it is not classified as such legally due to its low malt content. Beer contains 72 percent malt whereas sparkling liquor contains only 10 percent.

For this reason, sparkling liquors are sold at lower prices than beer under the local alcohol beverage tax law. At local convenience stores, a 500-milliliter can of beer is sold for 2,800 won ($2.16) while the same amount of sparkling liquor is sold between 1,600 won and 1,800 won, which is over 40 percent cheaper.

HiteJinro's sparkling liquor brand FiLite / Courtesy of HiteJinro

HiteJinro was the first player in the sparkling liquor market here by launching its very first product FiLite in April 2017. FiLite sales grew annually by 21 percent over the last five years, with over 1.4 billion cans sold.

OB recently introduced its own sparkling liquor product, OB Multi Grain (OMG), to compete with FiLite. It was the company's first sparkling liquor product released since it introduced Filgood in 2019.

In March this year, Shinsegae L&B also launched its sparkling liquor brand "Lets," selling over 813,000 cans in the past three months.

The company is also preparing to introduce a smaller size of sparkling liquor, coming in 300-milliliter cans, and sell them through its retail operations such as E-mart and E-mart Traders. Shinsegae L&B set its sales goal for this year at 10 billion won.

Since June last year, the prices of beer as well as processed and fresh foods have been increasing. Consequently, consumers have started to prefer sparkling liquor for its cost-effectiveness.

"With the overall beer market shrinking in the past two years, only sparkling liquor has been showing steep growth. This trend is likely to continue as the country is suffering from global inflation and we don't know who will be the winner between the three," a local brewery firm official said.