“The law is strict with producers”: Cape Verde’s push to modernise grogue is squeezing small distillers

Image Description: A single clear plastic bottle stands upright, showing layers inside it. Water fills the bottom, grogue sits in the middle, and cloudy waste gathers at the top, showing the bottle’s changing use over time.

On a Tuesday morning in Mindelo, I finish a ten-liter plastic water bottle. At a co-working space, my neighbour suggests I leave it behind the reception desk instead of throwing it away. Why? A coworker collects these bottles to legally resell distilled grogue—Cape Verde’s traditional sugarcane spirit—sourced from a licensed producer. In a country where formal recycling is almost nonexistent, my bottle finds a second life. 

However, this one act captures a larger contradiction: in Cape Verde, plastic reuse is everywhere, but not everyone is allowed to do it.

Across the Atlantic archipelago, the scene is common. Neighbours and friends quietly collect used PET bottles, not for their deposit value—-there isn’t one—but because someone, somewhere, always needs a sturdy container. PET bottles are plastic containers made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a type of polyester. Often, and in this context, they are used to package homemade grogue. 

Grogue is more than a drink. It is cultural heritage, a rural livelihood, and increasingly, a contested product. In 2015, Cape Verde passed a law to professionalise grogue production, standardise hygiene, and pave the way for export markets. While larger distillers gained access to formal channels, many small-scale producers were left behind.

One of the few who managed to professionalise is Mickael Cabral Martins, who opened a licensed distillery in Cidade Velha, Santiago, in March 2025. “My grandfather was a grogue maker,” he explains. “After my father continued the tradition, I decided to take it further and turn it into a real business. There was a genuine demand from the Cape Verdean diaspora, but I also wanted to share our grogue with the rest of the world.”

The bottling requirements under the 2015 law deepened the divide between those inside the system and those excluded from it. Licensed producers are barred from reusing plastic bottles, while resellers continue to use them freely, operating in legal grey zones. That is why informal collectors still scour streets for discarded PET, turning waste into income. It is an ecosystem sustained by necessity, not luxury. In a country without a functioning recycling system, the irony is sharp: producers are punished for reuse, while resale in plastic thrives.

 

Law loopholes

How can resellers operate within the rules while reusing plastic bottles, when official producers cannot? The answer lies in a legal distinction. The rules apply specifically to producers who bottle and label their grogue—typically those targeting tourists or export markets.  Resellers, who buy legally distilled grogue in bulk and redistribute it, fall into a regulatory blind spot. As long as their supplier complies with the law, they often escape scrutiny. 

This inconsistency is not lost on producers. Cabral Martins is concerned about the imbalance: “The law is already quite strict with producers—especially regarding the limited production period and the heavy compliance requirements we must follow,” he says. “But in the case of resellers, the rules seem much less rigorous, even though they are the ones who are in direct contact with the final consumer.” 

For him, the gap creates a double standard that undermines the law’s intent. “Producers are penalised for practices that resellers can legally do without facing the same level of control. That doesn’t make sense.” He argues that the law should be clarified or revised to ensure all actors in the grogue market are held to consistent standards.

Who, then, gets to operate within the 2015 grogue law? And who doesn’t? 

“To become legal, I had to build proper infrastructure and get materials that comply with Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP),” says Cabral Martins. “Finding these locally was almost impossible, especially stainless steel. That’s why I designed and produced my own bottles.” While the government offers customs exemptions for importing production materials, many essentials are simply unavailable on the islands. 

 

Small-scale vs professional producers

The standards set by the 2015 law disproportionately affect small-scale and informal producers, many of whom lack the licenses, capital, or equipment to comply. Only six per cent of the Cape Verdean grogue production units—-19 out of 312 registered-meet legal standards. An estimated sixty per cent of grogue on the market is produced underground and thus illegally, mainly on Santiago and Santo Antão. Producers found in violation face fines and closure. 

“The law is the same for everyone, but small producers face completely different realities,” says Cabral Martins. “Everything—— from equipment to bottles—— needs to be imported, and that’s not feasible for many.”  Reused beer bottles remain common in small shops. “The glass market is very limited here since there’s no glass factory. Small producers often have limited resources and therefore turn to reuse.” 

On the production side, compliance is often out of reach. “All the equipment must be imported, which requires significant financial means that many producers simply don’t have.”

The Confraria do Grogue de Santo Antão (CONGROG), which helped draft the 2015 law, defends its zero-tolerance approach. “We wanted rules that would solve the old problems of grogue—such as the use of refined sugar or additives—and open doors to demanding export markets such as the US and EU,” says Alberto Lima, the organisation’s president. “The bottle types are fixed by legislation and follow international norms. Because grogue is sold abroad and to tourists, the authorities must enforce them with zero tolerance. It’s about food safety.”

 

Regulatory exclusions

The intention behind Cape Verde’s grogue laws was to protect public health and promote the drink as a high‑quality national product fit for export. Decree-Law No. 7/2015 and later No. 11/2015 set strict sanitary and technical requirements: producers must use only local sugarcane, distill naturally fermented syrup, and label bottles with origin and alcohol content. 

That level of rigour stands out in a country that has nonetheless appeared repeatedly in international news for tourists contracting stomach illnesses at resort destinations such as Sal and Boa Vista, cases often attributed to food safety, water quality, or hygiene standards. However, the policies benefit larger or urban distillers with resources to professionalise. Small rural producers lack access to formal support, bottling materials, or processing infrastructure.

Meanwhile, foreign alcohol brands more easily meet import requirements and often face lower scrutiny, creating an uneven playing field where local traditions are constrained while international competition expands. CONGROG itself acknowledges that the law has fallen behind reality. “Ten years on, the legislation needs an upgrade. The world is moving fast, and the rules are being out-run.”

This imbalance reveals how government regulations designed for modernisation, can marginalise informal workers and undermine local economies. Lima points to imported ultra-cheap  “whiskies” and  “vodkas” of dubious quality that escape testing. “Authorities should bar products that fail the standards imposed on grogue.”

To survive, he argues, smaller producers must cooperate. “There are almost 200 micro-stills just on Santo Antão. Individually, they lack scale and financing, and our culture is fiercely individualist, so cooperatives are rare. If producers formed cooperatives, credit would be easier, inspections simpler, and environmental impacts controlled.”

 

Plastic currency

Reusing bottles delays their entry into the waste stream, but this grassroots circularity is unregulated—and illegal— due to safety concerns. Stories circulate about dangerous additives, including bleach, used in unregulated facilities. “People wrongly believe alcohol kills all bacteria,” says Cabral Martins. “But that’s not how safety works. Reused plastic can still pose serious risks. Glass is heavier and more expensive, but essential for quality and safety.”

Plastic is expressly banned during the aging stage and for final packaging. Article 30 of the law requires containers to be “specific for food-industry use and preferably tamper-proof.”

On grogue-producing islands such as Santo Antão and Santiago, reused plastic bottles have become a kind of informal currency. While formal data is scarce, anecdotal evidence points to a widespread economy of collection, circulation, and reuse—made possible by the near-total absence of recycling infrastructure.

A grogue reseller from Mindelo,  who asked to remain anonymous,  explains: “Almost a hundred per cent of our deliveries are in plastic bottles because that’s what’s most requested: people ask for five, ten, fifteen, twenty litres.” She and her partner reuse only bottles that previously held water or juice, inspecting each one. “If the bottle is dented or worn out, we don’t use it. We just wash plastic bottles with water and a bit of detergent.” Glass bottles, when used, are sterilised with boiling water. “We rarely reuse wine bottles. But when we do professional bottling, that’s what we plan to use more.”

Their supplier is a licensed, medium-scale producer from Santo Antão, who complies with legal norms. “We’ve never had issues with authorities,” she says. Most bottles come from personal use or friends. “There’s always someone who needs a bottle. To store water, for gardening, or for grogue. If they weren’t reused, they’d go in the trash, which would just increase pollution.”

 

The risk and cost of plastic (re)use

Even with the law in place, plastic remains widespread because for many producers the choice isn’t between plastic and glass but between plastic or nothing. Glass is expensive and not easily available, and the infrastructure for consistent legal grogue bottling remains underdeveloped. 

“Glass is expensive and hard to get,” the reseller says. “Plastic bottles are practical, especially when people ask for 5 or 10 liters. We hope to start professional bottling in the future, mostly using wine bottles, but those plans have been delayed due to bureaucratic hurdles, such as obtaining packaging that meets legal requirements.”

According to Cabral Martins, a bottle return system and a local recycling factory could make a huge difference. “It would lower costs and make glass more accessible. That’s how we eliminate plastic.”

While CONGROG sees strict regulation as a gateway to export credibility, the consumer advocacy group Associação para Defesa do Consumidor (ADECO) cautions that rigidity risks deepening exclusion. According to ADECO, limited access to safe bottling practices isn’t just a technical issue; it’s rooted in economic and structural barriers. 

“When the budget is extremely limited, price becomes the main selection criterion,” the organisation says. “Even aware of the health risks tied to unregulated drinks, many consumers choose them because they are significantly cheaper than legal, bottled alternatives. The informal market is often closer – physically and socially – through trusted networks of neighbors and local producers. This lowers access barriers and reinforces normalization of informal consumption. When the formal market does not offer affordable options, the consumer feels ‘forced’ to accept the risk. The choice, in this case, is not a preference, but a necessity.” 

ADECO proposes three reforms: a mandatory, low-cost, flexible certification scheme guaranteeing minimum hygiene and alcohol standards; a sliding-scale excise tax tied to production volume; and a mandatory system of sealed, numbered containers—glass or certified PET—linked to a deposit-return scheme.

The story of grogue in Cape Verde isn’t just about bottles or booze. It is about how policy shapes what is possible—and for whom. When glass is unaffordable or unavailable, and plastic is banned, reuse becomes resilience. 

So when I emptied my ten-litre bottle in Mindelo and left it at the reception desk, I wasn’t just discarding waste. I was entering a parallel system. A coworker, operating legally yet informally, would fill it with grogue and deliver it to someone who asked for exactly that: five, ten, or fifteen litres.

 

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Edited/Reviewed by Caleb Okereke, Patricia Kisesi, Awom Kenneth and Uzoma Ihejirika.

Illustrated by: Rex Opara