Elise Seibold: ‘Suntory failed its customers in 2024’

The excitement was palpable at Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I early last year, as the team geared up to launch Blucozade. The first-ever cross-category innovation from its flagship Lucozade brand, it was set to make 2024 a transformational year for the soft drinks supplier.

But while the NPD did add £24m in RSV [NIQ, YTD we 21 December 2024] it couldn’t even come close to offsetting what turned out to be one of the supplier’s most challenging years to date.

“Unfortunately, we failed our consumers and our customers in 2024, because we were not able to supply them,” admits SBF GB&I chief operating officer Elise Seibold. “We had really strong plans, but the issues we experienced meant we missed part of the peak season. There’s never a good time for these kinds of issues, but it was really, really not a good moment.”

The problems Seibold is alluding to took root last February, when production was disrupted by industrial action led by Unite union members at its factory in Coleford, Gloucestershire. Then came a tragic fatality involving a worker at the same site in April. In the immediate aftermath, SBF halted production for five days to allow for investigations by the authorities. Supply to the trade was severely disrupted, with retailers and wholesalers experiencing shortages of both Lucozade and Ribena throughout last summer.

Seibold – who officially took charge of operations at SBF in November 2024, having been interim COO since last July – doesn’t shy away from the scale of the opportunity missed. The disruption cost the supplier – part of the Japan-based Suntory Group – 40 million litres in lost sales, equating to “more or less 10% the size of our business”, she estimates. Lucozade – which was the worst hit of all SBF’s brands – recorded a £10.2m loss in 2024, after volumes dipped by 3.8% [NIQ 52 w/e 28 December 2024].

“The simplistic story would be that we had industrial action and then a tragic incident, so we had to shut the factory for five days,” says Seibold. “But the issues were underlying, and that’s why we had to do not just a very small plaster, but a more fundamental fix.”

Internal assessments following April’s production shutdown revealed “many areas for improvement”, Seibold says. Guided by ‘kaizen’ – a Japanese business philosophy focused on continuous improvement – SBF embarked on an end-to-end review of everything from bottling line efficiencies to the make-up of the leadership team at Coleford. This meant a phased return to full production, extending disruption for many lines well into autumn.

“We were back to service levels above 95% from the end of the year, so it was more or less six months of disruption,” Seibold says. But things have now turned a corner, she insists, pointing out SBF still managed to grow both revenues and profit in 2024. Production output, meanwhile, reached its highest level since 2018 in May and June of this year.

“We’re improving gradually,” she says. “I can see it month after month. We’re not fully there yet, but we’re on the right path.”

Still, wholesalers were warned to expect more disruption in June, after production was again suspended on some Lucozade Sport lines to ensure the delivery of core products. “Lucozade Sport is fast-growing,” Seibold says. “This year we’re seeing growth of more than 20%, and last year the same kind of trajectory. Demand is growing faster than our ability to increase efficiencies.”

Ribena rebrand

Fixing Lucozade’s supply challenges is vital if Seibold is to achieve her stated aim of doubling the SBF business by 2030. It’s one of the supplier’s two power brands – alongside Ribena – that will drive up to 80% of growth in the coming years, she says.

While “booming” sales of Lucozade Sport are arguably a nice problem to have, Ribena’s fortunes have been more mixed. The brand slipped out of the top 100 in The Grocer’s Britain’s Biggest Brands survey 2025 after sales fell by 0.6% on volumes down 2% [NIQ]. Ribena had lost its way and was failing to communicate its “values or benefits” to consumers effectively, Seibold admits.

In July, SBF unveiled a new look and £7m advertising campaign rooted in another Japanese concept, ‘seikatsusha’ – a marketing approach based on deep understanding of the consumer as a human being.

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“Talking to consumers, we realised there’s a huge emotional link to Ribena still,” says Seibold. “It’s 85 years old, and many British people have grown up with it. When we asked people what they liked about the brand they said ‘it transports me back to my childhood’. Ribena has this superpower to take you home. This is what we translated in the campaign.”

Pushing the timeless appeal of brands like Ribena and Lucozade is every bit as important as responding to shifting consumer preferences in soft drinks, Seibold insists. While there’s “a clear boom of insurgent brands with more functional ingredients”, she says “iconic and trusted brands” are also seeing renewed appeal.

“We invest a lot into constantly fuelling the iconic nature of our big brands,” she says. “We also have a very strong strategy around category expansion to explore untapped segments that are booming.”

That’s why the supplier has penned a deal to distribute PepsiCo-backed clean energy brand Celsius, and extended into alcohol with the launches of Japanese pre-mix –196 last year and Spanish wine-based spritz La Casera this spring.

The move into the fast-growing RTD segment makes sense for a soft drinks supplier like SBF, Seibold says. “Categories are blurring, and [like soft drinks] alcoholic ready-to-drink is mostly sold in convenience stores and grocery stores. The way you manage stocks is similar and so is the route to market, so you get lots of benefits in terms of efficiency.”

It helps too that SBF’s parent and sister companies Suntory Group and Suntory Global Spirits already have considerable knowhow in alcohol. “We can bring some expertise that we have from Oceania, the US and Japan, where we’re a big player in this area,” Seibold says. “As a big company we can also put large investments on the table. We’ve invested big money on –196.”

Despite that backing, –196 remains relatively niche – its UK off-trade sales amount to just £959k [NIQ 52 w/e 19 April 2025]. Given the challenge and cost of building a brand from scratch, was SBF not tempted to follow the route taken by its competitor Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and roll out boozy brand extensions for its major soft drinks?

“I don’t see it for us because of the unique value of our brands,” Seibold says. “As a marketer, I fundamentally believe you need to stick to the role you play in people’s lives. When you diverge too much from your DNA, you lose your essence and your relevance.”

It looks like Booze-cozade isn’t in the NPD pipeline just yet.