Britvic stills and carbonates brands buoy profits

Britvic, the soft drinks company, has seen a 16.3% rise in pre-tax profits to £20m in the six months to April 12, thanks to the strong performance of its stills and carbonates brands.

In Great Britain and its international operations, excluding Ireland, it saw operating profit rise 17.7% to £31.9m, with revenue rising 7.6% to £382.1m.

The company says that in Great Britain, brands such as Robinsons, Fruit Shoot, Gatorade and Drench drove stills volumes up by 6%, outperforming the stills market by 12%.

As the distributor and marketer of a number of PepsiCo brands, Britvic saw strong performances by Pepsi, 7Up and its recently relaunched Tango brand. The soft drinks company says they drove Great Britain carbonates volumes up by 7.5%, outperforming the market by 7.3%.

Chief executive Paul Moody says: “Revenues in our second half so far continue in line with our first half performance and we have also started to see modest improvements in the British soft drinks market.

“These trends combined with our proven sales and marketing strategies as well as disciplined cost management mean that we are very well-placed to drive continued group earnings growth and cash generation.”

Britvic has this year launched several promotional campaigns for its Tango brand with the creation of limited edition cans. In one instance, it turned its logo upside down as part of a stunt carried out in conjunction with social networking site bragster.com.

This month, it also launched a new campaign for its natural fruit juice brand Juicy Drench. The ads, created by CHI & Partners, feature a cowboy riding a giant pheasant.†