FDBusiness.com

Continued market share gains in Great Britain, a successful innovation programme and further expansion into continental Europe, were behind an 18.1% increase in operating profit (EBIT) before exceptional and other items to £129.6m at Britvic for the 53 weeks ended October 3rd, 2010. The rise was due in part to the Eur237m acquisition of Britvic France, which contributed £85.2m to group revenue of £1.14b. Underlying revenue rose by 5.9% to £1.05b.

However, £137.9m of exceptional and other items, including a one-off impairment charge of £104.2m for the Irish business, left the UK-based soft drinks producer with a pre-tax loss of £28.8m against a pre-tax profit of £66.2m in the previous year.

Although the Great Britain and international businesses performed strongly, Britvic Ireland had another tough year but managed to grow volume by 1.3% in stark comparison to last year’s 10.7% fall.

Paul Moody, chief executive of Britvic.

“Britvic has again demonstrated its ability to grow the business despite the difficult conditions in the wider economy. 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,” says Paul Moody, chief executive of Britvic. “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.”

He continues: “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.”