2023 Britvic Soft Drinks Review Licensed - Flipbook - Page 2
WELCOME
SUSTAINABILITY
CATEGORY OVERVIEW
Welcome
to the Britvic Soft Drinks Review
A year of resilience, creativity
and bumps in the road
The past year has been a bumpy ride. Any sighs of relief
over Covid’s fading in early 2022 soon turned to breaths
of trepidation about the new challenges we all faced.
But the soft drinks industry adeptly negotiated the
bumps in the road, achieving value and volume growth
in a year when many other categories struggled to grow
in real terms.
This is proof of the resilience and creativity of
producers, as well as the special place soft drinks hold
in people’s hearts. The fact that brands continue to win
share in soft drinks, despite the pressure on people’s
finances, is testament to the quality and consistency of
the drinks we produce and the reassurance and comfort
our brands provide.
The soft drinks category is one of the most accessible
and affordable there is. It is ubiquitous across the
grocery, convenience, foodservice and licensed
channels. In this, Britvic’s review of the first year with no
Covid-related restrictions in place since the start of the
pandemic, we celebrate the successes and assess the
challenges producers and their customers face.
The successes of the past year have been achieved
amidst huge economic, political and social volatility.
The cost of everything, everywhere, all at once – labour,
energy, logistics, raw materials, CO2, tax… you name
it – has exploded, just as the industry is striving to cut
its environmental impact and respond to changes in the
ways people are living post-pandemic.
Continued investment in innovation, branding and
building stronger routes to market to ensure soft drinks
are available where and when people want them has
been key over the past year. So too has developing
compelling marketing campaigns that enthral and excite
a new generation of consumers.
Consumer needs are changing. We must continue
to change with them with wider portfolios that meet
broader ranges of requirements, be they natural thirstquenchers, exciting flavour variants, more sophisticated
drinks, energising pick-me-ups or functional health
shots. The following pages provide many inspirational
examples of how the industry is doing this.
2
INTRODUCTION
The industry has also made crucial progress towards
building a circular packaging economy, investing in
building the infrastructure that the effective running of
Scotland’s Deposit Return Scheme (DRS), which is due
to be launched in 2024, will require.
DRS in Scotland – and in England, Wales and Northern
Ireland when these nations’ schemes get up and
running in 2025 – will help us increase recycling, cut
waste, littering and industry reliance on virgin plastic.
It’s imperative that support for DRS is maintained and
a clear, coherent and consistent approach is followed
throughout the UK.
Economic, as well as environmental, challenges will
remain for soft drinks producers in the coming year, of
course. It’s important that we rise to these challenges
in partnership with the retailers and foodservice and
licensed operators we supply, working together to give
consumers even more reasons to continue to spend
their money on soft drinks.
There will inevitably be more bumps in the road before
2023 is through. But this report gives plenty of reasons
to be optimistic about the coming year. And not just
for soft drinks producers. By building on our progress,
producers and the businesses they supply can
contribute towards making Britain a happier, healthier
and more sustainable place to be.
Kind regards
Paul Graham
Managing Director