Spanish owner puts £1m into juice brand

Wine maker J Garcia Carrion, which owns the brand, established its UK headquarters in Leeds in 2002 to supply own-brand juice to Asda. It now supplies more than 20 supermarket-branded juice and Don Simon products across the UK.

The company has stepped up its investment in the Don Simon brand this year, spending almost £1m on boosting brand awareness.

The investment appears to be paying off. The UK turnover has grown by 25 per cent in 2011 to £120m and the company expects to see 30 per cent growth next year. The turnover for the whole group, which exports to 113 countries, is 660m euros.

The Leeds office, which employs five people, controls the supply of juice into the UK as well as developing and marketing Don Simon products.

Customers include Asda and Sainsbury’s as well as cruise ships, airlines, schools, care homes and bars and restaurants.

Marketing manager Richard Cawood said: “The dream is to turn it into a top 100 grocery brand. It means doubling our sales but we only have two or three big accounts at the moment. There’s lots more business out there we can go after to become a household name.

He added: “In the future, there won’t just be five people working out of Leeds, there will be a fully-fledged business. There’s a potential to bring our haulage in-house and start manufacturing in the UK. There are all sorts we can look at as we grow.”

This year, sales of chilled juice overtook long life juice for the first time in the UK.

According to the latest Kantar data, Don Simon sold 13.5 million litres of chilled juice in the last 12 months, an increase of 199 per cent on 2010.

The brand has also boosted sales by launching special offers to combat the downturn in consumer spending. “People don’t have a lot of money to spend,” said Mr Cawood. “Temporarily, we’ve driven people into the brand by promoting the price.”

Growth has also come from a raft of new product developments – all created and marketed in Leeds.

There has been a particular push towards children’s drinks. The firm recently signed a licensing agreement with Disney to launch a new children’s smoothie range in Asda, which will roll out to other retailers in January 2012.

It follows the launch of Don Simon’s Juice Out carton drink for children, which has sold over 1.4m six-packs in Asda stores in less than a year.

Mr Cawood said: “When you’re looking at products for children, there are two strands of thought. One is the nutrition, to give them one of their five a day, the other is kids don’t drink enough during the day and they need to keep hydrated and have an energy boost. That was the idea of Juice Out. It’s designed to rehydrate but it’s also a bit of fun and a source of vitamin source. It also had to hit a price point that wasn’t going to break the bank.”

In addition, Don Simon has launched a tropical juice drink, re-introduced its lemonade for the summer, and launched a range of juices for the wholesale market. Introducing a soya milk product is next on the list.

Mr Cawood believes there is potential in the smoothie market, which is currently dominated by Innocent. “I think there is a real opportunity for a high quality but good value alternative,” he said.

A lot of the growth in the UK market is through new flavours but 70 per cent of the market is still dominated by orange juice, apple juice and pineapple juice, with 60 per cent coming from orange juice alone.

The juice and smoothies market has become particularly crowded in the past 10 years but Mr Cawood said Don Simon’s raw material strategy – it has agreements with 30,000 Spanish farmers – means it can control its prices better than its competitors.

“From-concentrate juice is being traded like a commodity at the moment so the price is going through the roof,” he said. “The cost of raw materials is always a challenge but we’re able to control some of it so we’re not as affected as some other brands by price increases elsewhere.”

Diversified firm started with wine

J Garcia Carrion was founded in 1890, when a large-scale winery was built to deal with the growth of exports of wines from Jumilla to France.

The ancestors of the company were owners of vineyards making wines and selling them from their own cellars. In 1945, the Brand Castillo de San Simon was launched. The first bottling line was installed in 1970 with a capacity of 18,000 bottles per hour. The Don Simon brand was first launched in 1982. Its television advertising slogan was: “I’m going to eat with Don Simon”. Since 1984 it has been the biggest-selling wine in Spain and the biggest-selling Spanish wine in the world (150m litres). It later diversified into juices, nectars, sangria, soups and stocks.