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FoodBev Media

7 April 2008

Steve Wheatley, Granini

Steve Wheatley, Granini

As up to 30,000 visitors converged on the Food & Drink Expo at the UK’s National Exhibition Centre (NEC) in Birmingham this month (6-9 April), one prominent presence among the beverage producers’ stands was juice maker Granini UK. Steve Wheatley, Sales & Marketing Director For Granini UK, found time for a short interview on the brand’s plans and aspirations in the British market:

Tell us about Granini UK’s new product development.

“The granini 1 litre range was relaunched in July 2007 from glass into PET, with a new distribution partner to step-change the UK business and drive brand growth. Granini is a new premium sun-ripened ambient fruit juice range set to revolutionise the category.

“Granini has identified through several pieces of research that there is an unmet demand in the market for the unique variants we offer, and chilled juice consumers are already trading back into ambient for more interesting fruit variants.

“Granini wants to build on this offering with our first-to-market portfolio, and capture the consumer’s imagination with our new range of juices including Apricot, Banana and red berries such as Strawberry, Cherry and Raspberry.

“Unlike more exotic fruits such as Kiwi, Guava and Lychee, we found that consumers are more familiar with the taste of these fruits and therefore likely to purchase them in a juice format, if they were available.

“Granini ultimately wants to provide retailers with premium products for their ambient fixtures, injecting dynamism into their offering and reducing lower margin, standard value lines such as orange juice, replacing these lines with new high value, more exciting variants.

“Granini plans to shake up the market by opening up usage occasions to all-day easy drinking. We want to move juice away from being just a functional morning five-a-day vitamin C fix – introducing delicious, smooth pleasurable juices such as Peach, Pear, Mango, Apricot and Banana.

“We will push our ambient juice’s benefits as a cocktail mixer, and a long drink for summer barbeques, linking it to holidays and other social occasions. The Granini brand is all about the pleasure and enjoyment of life, and as many consumers have enjoyed Granini on holiday, we have found that the Continental cues remind them of fun, sunshine and laid-back living.”

The trend elsewhere in the grocery market is for premiumisation – yet this is not the case for juices. Tropicana and Copella draw consumers into the mainstream arena, and that is affecting freshly squeezed juice. Is there currently no incentive for consumers to trade up?

“Granini believes that retailers will see huge benefits from the premiumisation of the ambient juice category. There is a significant opportunity for a premium brand in the fruit juice category, and our cash margin allows retailers to add value to a commoditised sector.”

Manufacturers are always seeking the next fruit to capture the market’s imagination. Last year it was pomegranate, and other fruits high in antioxidants. But what’s next? Health is becoming more closely linked with juices – so what are manufacturers doing to meet this demand?

“Super fruits have played a key role in adding value to this heath-driven market, and red berry fruits in particular, such as strawberry and cherry, are set to be very popular with consumers in 2008.

“Granini aims to draw consumers into the premium arena with Cherry, Strawberry and Raspberry juices – a range that is not currently available in chilled or ambient. Cherries in particular have been hailed as the new super fruit, being high in antioxidants, with a variety of health benefits.”

Germany’s Eckes-Granini Group is one of the top European producers of branded fruit drinks, with a market value of roughly £600 million (€761 million). Since May last year, Granini ambient juices have been distributed in the UK by the milk producers’ co-operative Dairy Farmers of Britain. The Granini brand is stocked in selected outlets of major retailers including Waitrose and Tesco.

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