What is San Benedetto’s position in the Italian beverage market, and on a global basis?
Pierluigi Tosato: Acqua Minerale San Benedetto is the first company in the non-alcoholic beverage market with entirely Italian share capital. With a market share of 12.8% in volume, we’re the second player in the sector and the 15th group in the whole food and beverage market.
We have five plants in Italy (Venice, Treviso, Pescara, Biella and Viterbo), two plants owned in Spain, one in Poland, one in Hungary and joint venture plants in Mexico and Dominican Republic. We’re currently commercially active in over 80 countries on five continents.
Our main markets, in addition to Western Europe (Austria, Germany, Switzerland, France and the UK) and the Eastern Europe area (Hungary, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Romania), are the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Israel, and Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand in South East Asia.
For a company best known for its water, you have a broad portfolio. Please run through your offerings, highlighting the latest launches.
Pierluigi Tosato: We offer nine brands and over 130 SKUs to our consumers in Italy and around the world, including mineral waters, flavoured mineral waters, sparking drinks, tea, sports drinks, aperitifs and still juice-based drinks.
Alongside Acqua Minerale San Benedetto, we have Acqua di Nepi, the naturally sparkling water preferred by top chefs, Primavera-Acque d’Italia, a regional water, and Guizza in the convenience segment.
Following the success last year of the refreshing and sugar-free flavoured water ‘Ice Formula Zero’, we launched the Aquavitamin range this year in four flavours.
Sparkling drinks represent the second largest market by volume and turnover in non-alcoholic beverages for San Benedetto, second only to mineral water, hence the strong interest of our group for this sector, within which we are the second largest producer in Italy.
In sparkling drinks, we produce the traditional aranciata, pompelmo, limonata and ginger, and for more refined palates, chinotto, gassosa, cedrata and spuma. 2012 saw the launch of Zero, a line of sparkling drinks with no added sugar.
We have the most comprehensive ready-to-drink tea range on the Italian market, Thè San Benedetto. The peach and lemon flavours are the most popular and they’re also available in Zero variants. Deteinato is a decaffeinated peach, lemon and apple tea suitable for children, and Verde is a natural, thirst-quenching green tea experience.
We also feature Ben’s brand aperitifs, Batik Succoso, still juice-based drinks and a chamomile flavoured Baby Drink. San Benedetto is licensed to produce and distribute products by Schweppes International in Italy, as well as the Oasis and Energade brands.
San Benedetto is known for its innovation in packaging. What has been the most important launch over the past few years?
Pierluigi Tosato: Innovation is our main driver. We like to call it ‘sustainable’; meeting the needs of consumers while respecting the environment. We created the new Eco-Green line of natural mineral water this May in formats for many consumption occasions, including the 1-litre Easy bottle, 50cl compact, plus the 1- and 2-litre family sizes.
These use rPET (reclaimed PET from recycled plastic) and offset 100% of the CO2 emissions through the purchase of carbon credits VERs (Verified or Voluntary Emissions Reductions) to finance projects to reduce greenhouse gas.
The Eco-Green logo on the label and the green cap emphasise the ecological message and promote it in-store. This is a tangible certification of our eco-social responsibility.
Your marketing of the Eco-Green and Easy bottles has had a big impact on consumer awareness. How long did you work on this development and what has been the reaction?
Pierluigi Tosato: Attention to environmental issues and energy saving is summarised in our company mission, Resources for Life. Since the early 1980s, we have invested heavily in technological innovation.
We were the first to commercialise PET in Italy and registered patents on the first plastic bottles. Our willingness to innovate has led us towards environmental sustainability, improving production efficiency, using clean energy sources, promoting the recycling of PET and making ever more eco-friendly containers, so reducing emissions of CO2. The results show a 13% reduction of CO2 emissions in the period 2008-2010, amounting to 30,000 tonnes (Bureau Veritas).
On 20 December 2011, we renewed an agreement with the Italian Environment Ministry, as the first Italian company to promote a process of voluntary reduction of carbon footprint.
The analysis of CO2 consumption in the mineral water life cycle shows that packaging is responsible for 50% emissions. The result is Easy, with CO2 offset, by 30% of rPET use and our new Eco-Green line.
We have educated consumers to recycle, with the PET Recovery project, signing partnerships with large retailer brands and businesses in the leisure sector to retrieve plastic bottles on site. The material is processed into rPET granules as a raw material.
‘Easy’ leads in the bottled water sector with a 51% share (IRI 2011) and was elected Product of the Year in 2011 (an award received in 2012 for Sparkling and Lightly Sparkling mineral water). Over 1,500,000 plastic bottles have been collected with the ‘PET Recovery’ project.
Developing drinks purely for children is a step ahead of many. What research gave you the basis for this NPD?
Pierluigi Tosato: Kids’ products are consumed by children and yet chosen by their mothers, so the predisposition to spend is higher. Children’s food and drink products command high value and this sector has recently recorded double-digit growth. This has led to increasing attention by large retailers and the foodservice sector.
The family is always among our targets and we have the San Benedetto Kids line, incorporating the Baby Bottle, a small format of Acqua Minerale San Benedetto, Thè Deteinato, the drink without caffeine or colouring, enriched with fructose, Baby Drink, a fruit-flavoured natural mineral water based on chamomile. For this line, we chose 25cl squeezable containers with sports cap.
How many employees do you have right now?
Pierluigi Tosato: In the Scorzè plant near Venice, we have 1,030 people, with around 1,790 worldwide.
We improve efficiency throughout every area of the company from technological innovation to new sets of rules and responsibilities. Our staff are motivated by the Kaizen approach to improve customer service levels, productivity and efficiency. Thanks to this continuous improvement, the company is better structured without the need to increase the number of employees.
San Benedetto is a trusted brand name. How are you faring against the discount and store brands?
Pierluigi Tosato: San Benedetto enjoys spontaneous awareness levels close to 95%, attested by a huge presence in around 11 million Italian families.
Familiarity with the brand is increased by our multi-channel strategy. Indeed, we lead in the vending channel. We’re aware of growth in the discount channel in this particularly difficult time for the market, and our presence underlines continued consumer demand for premium brands.
What is the next step for you – more formats or more functionality, or something else?
Pierluigi Tosato: It’s important to segment and focus on different distribution channels. We were the first Italian company to look at multi-channels. Our strong manufacturing expertise and technical knowledge has allowed us to further segment our offering and be first to market with unique products and formats.
The consumer is interested in functional and healthy products and increasingly light and sugar-free versions; products that reflect their greater environmental sensitivity, and products with more functional packaging for those with an increasingly hectic lifestyle.
Claire Phoenix is managing editor of Beverage Innovation magazine.
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