Britvic: Brand behind UK Pepsi distribution cheers bumper growth as canned Lipton Ice Tea booms

Britvic has reported a strong six months thanks to the strength of Lipton Ice Tea, with the canned version’s launch bumping the brand’s revenue up 27.6 per cent.

The British soft drink manufacturer reported a revenue jump 11.2 per cent over the last six months, with profit after tax rising 10.1 per cent.

Revenue growth was especially strong outside the UK, with new market Brazil increasing 34.7 per cent.

Volume growth spiked in the most recent quarter, jumping to 7.4 per cent, with an average of 4.4 per cent growth over the six months.

This led the company to sell 841.9 million litres of soft drinks in the UK over the last six months.

Britvic is the owner of drinks brands like Fruit Shoot and Robinsons, as well as distributing Pepsico’s brands like Pepsi and 7UP in the UK.

The company pointed to its new marketing efforts as a key driver of growth, with Fruit Shoot’s new events at Christmas and Halloween, including a partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital.

This has been pushed by the company ramping up advertising and promotional spending by a whopping 38.9 per cent.

Britvic also announced today its third share buyback of £75m over the next 12 months, crediting its “strong earnings, free cashflow generation, and positive outlook”.

Simon Litherland, CEO of Britvic, said: “As expected, our market-leading growth comes from the combination of another strong performance from our scale family favourite brands, coupled with accelerated growth in Brazil and across multiple new growth spaces, such as London Essence, Aqua Libra and Plenish.”

“Looking forward, I am confident that we will deliver a strong full year performance. In the medium term, I firmly believe the continued execution of our strategy and growth drivers will allow us to sustainably outperform both the market and our historical top-line growth rate.”