The Playbook That Stopped Working in London and New York Is Still Working in Lagos: A Conversation with Ioannis Simos, Premium Spirits Country Director, Nigerian Bottling Company, Coca-Cola HBC

Across most mature spirits markets right now, the premium story is under pressure. Super-premium spirits fell 15% in 2025. Scotch whisky exports to the US dropped 15% following tariff imposition. Cognac exports to North America slid 34%. The assumption that consumers would keep trading up, indefinitely, reliably, across every market, has broken down in practice.

But that breakdown is not happening everywhere.

In Nigeria, premium spirits are growing. Not in spite of what is happening elsewhere, but in a way that illuminates exactly why premium stalled where it did, and what it actually requires to keep working.

Ioannis Simos leads Premium Spirits at Nigerian Bottling Company, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola HBC. His vantage point is unusual: one of the world’s largest bottling and distribution operations, deploying premium spirits brands into a market where the trade-up cycle is still intact, but where the conditions that keep it intact are specific, fragile, and demanding.

Lagos Is Doing What London Used to Do