Take-home market

Brands

Innocent and Red Bull show fast growth

With sales value of £960m Coca-Cola remains the biggest take-home brand, followed by fast growing Lucozade (£338m). Robinsons (£284m) remains the third best selling brand. The fastest growing brands in the Top 10 were Innocent (up 46%) and Red Bull (up 23%), reflecting industry trends.

Suppliers

Branded suppliers enjoy healthy growth

The top three branded suppliers all shared in the growth story. CCE grew sales value by 4% to £1.59bn, while Britvic grew value by 2% to £638m. GSK enjoyed the strongest growth among the market leaders – buoyed by the boom in drinks with functional benefits, it pushed sales value up 6% to £480m. Innocent continued to benefit from the health and wellbeing trend: sales grew 47% to £143m, raising it from eighth to seventh place in the supplier league table (refer to take-home data tables).

Retailers

“Drink now” is the growth driver

The year’s success stories were the 7% value growth at co-ops and symbols, and 6% growth at convenience stores. Independents maintained steady growth at 4%. By contrast, out of town stores – the biggest sellers of soft drinks – delivered a more modest 2% and high street stores saw sales levelling off. The main growth driver appears to be sales for immediate consumption: dividing the market into grocery multiples vs smaller “impulse” outlets, the impulse stores grew sales twice as fast as the multiples. This emphasises the importance of a well-ranged front of store area and convenient, “on-the-go” pack formats.

Pure juice grew 5% in value to £1.04bn