Britvic outgrows economic challenges

Reporting a rise in sales and profits today (2 December), Britvic said its 2010 UK business highlights included market share gains and the launch of its Mountain Dew Energy drink and expansion into mainland Europe with the May acquisition of Britvic France for €237m. Chief executive Paul Moody said Britvic had demonstrated its ability to grow the business despite the difficult conditions in the wider economy. He went on: "This performance was achieved through the breadth and quality of our brand portfolio, strong delivery of innovation and a targeted and focused programme to grow our business internationally. "We are delighted that Britvic France is performing well and its integration into the Group is on plan. We are taking further steps to restructure our business in Ireland and believe that this, along with our strong brands and leading market positions will create a platform to enable us to rebuild the profitability of this business. "Whilst we expect the consumer and cost environment to remain challenging, we are confident in our ability to compete strongly in the markets in which we operate. The Group's extensive brand and innovation plans, combined with satisfactory trading in the first few weeks of the new financial year, mean we are in good shape to deliver another robust set of results for the year ahead." On a like for like basis for the 52 weeks to the end of September, group revenue was 14.6% up at £1.1bn while pre-tax profit rose 21.5% to £104.6m