Britvic Limited

I had to understand that point of view as opposed to just, starting with a technology.

You remind me actually, I spent many years in drinks at Britvic and the CEO had this brilliant phrase.

He said, we should start trying to make what we'll sell rather than selling what we can make.

Because what we were doing is building factories and producing things that are efficient and then asking the sales team to sell it.

To bring this to life in another way, I currently work strategy director at Dash on the left-hand side, which is a flavoured sparkling water brand.

And we have the competitor on the right, which is owned by Britvic, Aqualibra.

Britvic, revenues of 2 billion.

Dash, revenues of 30 million or such.

These look the same, and they look the same because they are the same.

This is why I love Clayton Christensen's Innovative Dilemma book, because big companies fail to innovate because they've built the organization around safety and de-risking.

And I noticed when I was at Britvic, when I created a new business unit, I had to take everything outside of the organization to make it work, because otherwise I was fighting against all the systems that were, you know, the annual planning cycles, the the 90 stage process that you had to go through to get things away and that to make it work I had to basically invent a new business on the side that's the only way it worked

Well, the other part of it is if you're coming in as a challenger, you can't act with conventional wisdom.

The reality is you're not gonna win at the game everybody else is playing.

That's right.

It's very uncomfortable for everybody else.

I remember when I was presenting the idea for my C brand units at Britvic, I got to a place where I was okay if I got fired.

I

So very nice to see that because that's the hallmark of the value creation that we have at Carlsberg.

What's happened with, obviously you acquired Britvic a year ago, and it's really increased the proportion of your sales in Western Europe in particular, and that comes from soft drinks.

Has that sales mix continued to edge towards soft drinks?

It does.

I think you're spot on.

It was quite a pivotal moment two years ago when we bought Britvic.

If you look at Carlsberg today, a third of our business, so a whole third of our business is now soft drinks post the acquisition.

And if you look at the numbers we just reported, we see 9% volume growth in soft drinks across our portfolio.

It's a wonderful mix, isn't it?

What's great about Britvic, right? So I've been in Britvic now 18 years this month, would you believe? And I think I do frequently get asked the question, why 18 years in one company? But I haven't been doing the same role for that 18 years.

And it's a huge period of time where ultimately the business has changed so much.

Our brands have actually changed massively.

But also just Getting part of different networks and events, I think are really important.

There's plenty of webinars that we can all join.

There is plenty of capability training now within Britvic being part of the Carlsberg group.

We have access to so much more opportunities and.

it was even a thing in other sport.

Team Brit- Britvic?

Team Britvic and Dawn milk.

Dawn milk.

Yeah.