Premium soft drinks market worth more than half-a-billion pounds

02-Jul-2019 - Last updated on 09-Jul-2019 at 10:30 GMT

Space invaders: Fentimans’ report claims mixers occupy more than a quarter of non-alcoholic fridge space in the on-trade

In its first report on premium soft drinks and mixers, Fentimans has revealed the category has grown by 33.1% year on year and is now worth a huge £517m.

Produced in collaboration with CGA, the UK On-Trade Premium Soft Drinks and Mixers Market Report 2019 found that almost 12p in every £1 spent on soft drinks and mixers in the on-trade went on a premium option.

This came against the backdrop of a strong year of sales in the drink-led pub sector, with Fentimans finding that year-on-year value had increased by 6% to £7.3bn.

What’s more, Fentimans found mixers were the fastest growing non-alcoholic sub-category by value, recording an 81.3% year-on-year increase to a total value of £323.1m with premium mixers taking a 63.3% share of total year-on-year value growth in the soft drinks and mixers market overall.

This growth saw mixers cement their position as the most valuable sub-category of non-alcoholic drink, ahead of juice, flavoured carbonates and water.

Premium soft drink consumers

According to the botanically brewed drinks maker’s report, consumers of premium soft drinks and mixers are most likely to be affluent women and within the 35 to 54-year-old age group.

Fentimans report found that almost two thirds (63.3%) of premium non-alcoholic drink consumers were female, compared to the average of 51.1% across all-consumer categories.

Moreover, it found that premium soft drinks consumers were generally younger with 29.2% and 39.1% falling within the 18 to 34 and 35 to 54-year-old age brackets respectively, compared to 28.8% and 33.9% respectively who also drink non-premium beverages.

In addition, a third (33.7%) of premium soft drink consumers drink out weekly with more than half (51.8%) eating out weekly – spending on average £15.46 more per outing than those who also consume non-premium drinks.

What’s more, consumers of premium soft drinks and mixers have an annual household income £7,000 higher than the industry benchmark.

Share of fridge

After the launch of 458 new soft drinks in the past three years, mixers now occupy more than a quarter of non-alcoholic fridge space in the on-trade.

Though juices still enjoy the lion’s share with almost a third (32.8%) of fridge space, mixers now occupy 27.1% of non-alcoholic fridge room in the on-trade – an increase of 2.2 percentage points during the past year.

In addition, flavoured carbonates, cola and water each registered 11.1%, 10.6% and 9.9% of space respectively.

Discussing the drinks maker’s inaugural report, Andrew Jackson, marketing director at Fentimans explained: “Set against a backdrop of continual change and the need to imagine what the future may look like, the inaugural Fentimans market report aims to stimulate thinking and provide relevant market intelligence to help operators who work in the industry make better business decisions and contribute towards shaping their future.”

The Fentimans report can be read in full here.