Talking to The Morning Advertiser (The MA), White also empathised with the UK on-trade and admitted he feels “the pain” operators are going through.
In its half-yearly results ended 31 August 2025, Irish business C&C Group – which owns drinks brands Bulmers, Magners and Tennent’s and also operates drinks and wine distributor Matthew Clark Bibendum – posted a 4% fall in net revenue from €861.4m in HY25 to €825.7m while adjusted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose from €57.0m to €58.1m.
Other notable KPIs included operating margin up 0.4ppts (percentage points) from 4.7% this time last year to 5.1%, underlying free cashflow shot up 115% from €19.4m to €41.7m and basic earnings per share rose 64% from 3.3 cents per share (c) to 5.4c.
Although White was unable to break down the figures for the UK on-trade in terms of volume and value sales, he said: “We are very closely linked into our customers. We feel the pain that hospitality operators are going through: their challenges associated with cost, passing that through to consumers and the impact that that has on volume.
In tune going forward
“We are working closely with all our customers to try to optimise their ranges, to ensure we give them that balance between great service, strong ranging and decent value for money.
“We are in tune with what people require and very empathetic to supporting the businesses as we go forward.”
Highlights in its results include Tennent’s and Bulmers delivering net revenue growth and improved market share, volume growth in GB on-trade distribution business and encouraging Magners progress in GB’s off-trade.
On the overall results, White told The MA: “We’ve worked hard but our revenue performance, while slightly down, is partly related to contractual switchovers in the Republic of Ireland, with BBG (Budweiser Brewing Group) brands moving out of our network and the mix is moving towards long alcoholic drinks with wine and spirits having a slightly poorer time.
“However, a lot of our performance improvement has been driven by cost control efficiency, both in our supply chain and in our manufacturing environment.
“I’m pleased our service levels are back to where, historically, we would have wanted them to be for all our customers. Therefore, we are delivering for our customers in these difficult days at a good level.
“It’s a solid set of results in quite a challenging environment.”
Best possible service
Looking at the future in the UK on-trade, White added: “Improvement for us starts with making sure we are giving our customers the best possible service.
“We want to give that service in as broad a sense as possible so that’s both to the outlets and from a category insight point of view – supporting our customers with their menu development, building the right range of drinks for the consumers they’re trying to target and I see that continuing as we as we look forward.
“We’ve got to focus our efforts internally on being as efficient as possible so we can support our customers right across the UK and Ireland.
“That will remain our sort of mantra as we look forward into the next period.”
He concluded: “We believe we are well prepared for the all-important festive trading period and while we expect challenging economic conditions to persist, we remain committed to the delivery of our full-year earnings targets.”
