Britvic lacks fizz as revenue falls 8.4%

INTERNATIONAL soft drinks business, Britvic has reported an 8.4% year-on-year fall in first quarter revenue at its Irish operations, to £42.1 million (€49m).

Despite this, the company — which basically owns the old C&C soft drinks division and brands such as Club, MiWadi and Ballygowan, as well as its own Robinsons product — said that improvement has been evident in the soft drinks sector in the Republic.

“The Irish soft drinks market demonstrated an element of relative improvement in the quarter, with Republic of Ireland market grocery volumes and value up by 2.8% and 0.7% respectively. The rate of decline in the Republic’s pub and club channel slowed in the quarter, with a 7% fall in both volume and value,” the company said in an interim management statement yesterday.

Britvic, which earlier this month announced the need for 100 redundancies after the second negative review of its Irish operations in as many years, added that its Irish volumes declined by 9.9% in line with its expectations.

During three months to the end of December, total group sales rose 20%, year-on-year, to £288.2m and sales in its core British market inched up 0.8% to £191.7m. With regard to the Irish operations, the company added savings from its “structural changes” here “will underpin profitability in 2011”.