INNOBEV GLOBAL SOFT DRINKS CONGRESS: ANDREW GIBB, COLDPRESS
‘The Poster Boys of HPP!’: Coldpress takes smoothie fight to Innocent
Talking to Ben Bouckley at the InnoBev Global Soft Drinks Congress in Lisbon, organized by Zenith International, Gibb says in this BeverageDaily.com podcast that he wants to build the world’s first global HPP brand, as UK-based Coldpress closes in on £2-3m sales in 2014.
“Coldpress was launched in London in 2011. If you go into Whole Foods or Planet Organic nowadays there are probably 8-10 HPP brands,” Gibb says.
“But they’re all niche – vegetable juices, coconut waters, specialty fruits all that sort of stuff. But we’re a genuine challenger brand,” adds Gibb, pictured below addressing conference delegates today.
Stemming the UK smoothie decline
Gibb says Coldpress Smoothies, launched into Tesco last September, had been incredibly successful and were only 10% more expensive than Innocent smoothies.
“Our job in life is to go on promotion 4-5 times a year, lower the barriers for trial and bring new consumers into the brand. Once they try the HPP technology, a cold pressed smoothie, they tend to stay,” he says.
A year ago Tesco in the UK asked Coldpress to do some NPD in the HPP space, and Gibb explains that the firm came up with its fruit and vegetable smoothies.
“Going up against a giant brand like Innocent was not on our agenda – but Tesco…saw the category was in serious decline, and that HPP could be a way of stemming that,” Gibb says.
‘We’ve got ambitions in the USA’
“We just had our Tesco review last week for the summer, and our listings of the smoothies are up 42%, so I think we might be on to something there,” he adds.
Gibb also reveals that the brand would like to launch in the US with juices and smoothies that are ideally 20-30% cheaper than existing “premium niche” brands Suja and Evolution Fresh.
“We’ve got ambitions there – but our focus is very much on Europe at the moment. We’ve just gone into Northern Ireland, Malta, Spain, a bit of product up in Norway at the moment. So there’s a lot of infill we can do in Europe,” he adds.
