Coca-Cola Amatil’s (CCA) Alcohol and Coffee business has continued its growth trend with earnings, revenue and volume all increasing for the first-half of the financial year.
The result comes within a tough first-half for the overall business, which saw a 29.3 per cent drop in half-year profits to $140.1m as the challenges continued for the soft drinks division.
Speaking about the performance of his division, the Managing Director of Alcohol and Coffee, Shane Richardson told TheShout, that it was important for the business to keep developing in order to maintain its growth.
“We have been very clear on where we are playing in the market and we have still got a continual funnel of NPD that we are bringing through. What we are also seeing is that within the brands that we have within the portfolio there are some under-indexed brands so we are really focusing on ensuring that the great quality of brands that we do we have, we are growing ones that have a lot of latent potential.”
The Alcohol and Coffee business saw revenue growth of 5.4 per cent, to $247.5m, while EBIT increased by 10.3 per cent to $21.5m.
Richardson added: “After two years of plus 30 per cent growth we have got another year where we have got a much larger business and we are still delivering double-digit growth.”
Looking to the second-half Richardson told TheShout that while they do see a potential impact with CDS legislation, the industry does face CPI increases every six months and so it will be hard to put an absolute number on what impact the CDS will have.
But in terms of what he was looking forward to for the second-half he added: “If you look at the whole Alcohol and Coffee business, we are continuing our growth trajectory in the beer category. We have got a great pipeline that we have developed in our spirit and RTD portfolio that we have brought to market and we’re continually looking for ways of finding challenged categories like Bourbon and re-igniting consumers back into that category. So that really excites me because that is a good challenge ahead for our industry and I think we have really taking the lead in trying to be drivers in new category growth, rather than accepting its decline.”
He added: “There are continual opportunities that are opening up for everyone, every day. We have talked premiumisation forever within our industry, but there are no signs that it is changing. We have got consumers who are moving further and further into craft beer and we believe there is a lot of potential in the craft beer portfolio.
“We have also seen through the recent DrinkWise study that there is a real positive trend towards alcohol consumption, so I think we are a really exciting industry that is maturing in a way that is responsible and also compliments the type of products that we are bringing out.
“Consumers are not just trading for value, they are really buying into great brands in this market. We have got fantastic brands and we believe there is incredible equity still to be built out of the width of our portfolio. So we just continually think it is an exciting time ahead.”