The soft drinks market is facing some serious headwinds this year, as accepted by Britvic this week and by its old sparring partner AG Barr yesterday.
The first, plainly, is consumer spending and confidence, if inflation rises. Soft drinks are not exactly huge outlays, but there will be an effect. The second is the rise in the cost of ingredients — because of increases on global markets and more expensive imports thanks to the lower pound — applying to anything from sugar through to plastic and metal packaging. A third factor is the government’s soft drinks levy to limit sugar consumption, although this does not kick in until next year.
Barr was indicating yesterday how it intends to face up to all these. With regard