Kent-based juice manufacturer, The Juice Executive, was founded by 26-year-old Alex Auger (below) in 2014, and has just broken the £1m turnover mark after securing a number of new contract manufacturing orders and the acquisition of ‘Radiance Cleanse’.
The firm has hired an extra eight people to support its expansion and has used the expertise of the Manufacturing Growth Programme (MGP) to help with strategy, structure and business flow.
“Like most people who start their own business, you can sometimes get weighed down in all the detail and trying to do everything yourself,” said Alex, who came up with the idea after travelling around Indonesia.
“I originally started off in my garage and was dropping samples off to some of the big financial services companies. It kind of snowballed since then and the time was right to put in some better practices that will allow me to concentrate on growth, whilst having a structured approach to securing and developing the best talent.
“We’ve just done the figures and we hit £1.01m in 2017, a £600,000 increase on the previous year. This has come from more retailers looking for us to contract manufacture their juices and a desire from independent coffee houses keen to co-brand their own range of juices. The plan is to grow by another 30% in the coming year.”
The Juice Executive manufactures over 400,000 bottles of organic juice every year. It produces 40 different organic juices, covering turmeric, beetroot, orange and ginger from a purpose-built site in Chatham.
“Alex is an inspirational young entrepreneur who is passionate about her products, her people, her clients and developing the raw pressed juice sector,” said Darren Booth, manufacturing growth manager at MGP. “As part of the work we did, we brought in a specialist that challenged her thinking and provided new ways of managing the business her own time. We put her in touch with a manufacturing expert from Locate in Kent, which has resulted in lean manufacturing being introduced and a new layout for the production facility.”