Britvic Loses its Fizz Due to Tough Trading

27 Jan 2016 --- Sales at Robinson’s fruit juice and Tango maker Britvic fell by close to 5 per cent at the end of last year, on the back of difficult trading conditions.

Britvic reported a 4.7 per cent fall in organic revenues to £290.1m ($414.5m) in the three months to December 20.

Britvic had previously warned the market that consumers were not spending as much on soft drinks.

But it said that trading during Christmas had trumped the previous year.

Chief executive Simon Litherland, flagged up “strong” innovation plans for the year ahead, including the launch of multi-pack versions of key brand Fruit Shoot in the US grocery channel.

He said: “As anticipated, our first quarter performance reflected both the prevailing challenging trading conditions and a slow start in October.

“However, trading over the entire Christmas period in our core markets was encouraging, with revenue ahead of last year, and in the quarter, we grew or held market share in each of these markets.”

In the UK, revenues dropped 1.2 per cent in volume in the period and fell 5.5 per cent in France.

However, in Ireland revenues grew by one per cent helped by the performance of its still water brand Ballygowan.

Britvic’s other brands include its soft drinks brand J20 and it also sells PepsiCo brands such as Pepsi and 7UP in the UK and Ireland.

By John Reynolds