Me and My Brand: Mark Edge of Purity Soft Drinks

Mark Edge, Head of Marketing at Purity Soft Drinks, reveals that fruit juices are enjoying great post-Covid popularity – and Purity’s NPD are tapping into the trend

Can you please give an overview of your brand?

Purity Soft Drinks a leading manufacturer of juices and juice drinks and the proud owners of Juice Burst and firefly. We have a clear mission as a business – to deliver natural refreshment for everyone. Juice Burst is now one of the biggest on-the-go juice drink brands in the UK, with no added sugar, one of your five-a-day and HFSS-compliant, all via a line-up of on-trend juice flavours.

How is your brand currently performing?

Juice Burst continues to go from strength to strength, significantly outperforming the Total Soft Drinks and Total Drink Now Soft Drinks categories¹. Our Juice Burst Orange and Apple flavours are already the third and fourth biggest Drink Now Fruit Juice SKUs, respectively². This overall performance is a testament to our commitment to supplying great-tasting, healthy juice in both classic and trending flavours.

How is the category currently performing?

The soft drinks category is worth £3.3bn annually to convenience retailers³, presenting a huge opportunity to increase sales by stocking an enticing range of soft drinks. This is especially true during the summer months, when more customers are seeking on-the-go thirst quenchers.

Do you have any new product development?

Launched recently, Juice Burst Summer Fruits delivers a refreshing blend of strawberry, cherry, and apple, and one of your five-a-day, and is already in the top 10 bestselling flavours within the on-the-go fruit juice market⁴.

Our latest flavour, Juice Burst Peach Ice Tea, is another popular choice and follows the tea-flavoured juice market growing ahead of the total soft drinks category year-on-year⁵. A refreshingly sweet blend of peach juice and black tea flavouring, Peach Ice Tea contains more fruit juice per bottle than any other SKU in the growing tea-flavoured juice market and is one of your five-a-day with no added sugar, artificial flavours or sweeteners.

We have also recently introduced attached caps across the entire Juice Burst range, making the packaging 100 per cent recyclable. The introduction of attached caps across all Juice Burst SKUs will make it easier for consumers to recycle the products more effectively, reducing the frequency of bottle caps being discarded or littered and helping to ensure they are captured and recycled with the rest of the packaging. The attached caps also see the removal of foil seals from all Juice Burst bottles, reducing foil packaging waste by 10 tonnes annually.

We have invested significantly in testing, development and new factory equipment to deliver this packaging update. With sustainability found to be one of the most important considerations when choosing a soft drink or juice drink to purchase⁶, the latest updates aim to ensure the sustainability of its brands for years to come.

The new caps were well received during national testing trials, with consumers finding that the classic Juice Burst wide mouth design kept the attached cap from being an interference and ensured an easy to drink and close experience.

How are you supporting your brand and NPD?

We recently launched Juice Burst’s biggest marketing campaign yet, Punchy To The Core. The campaign will keep the punchy taste of our bestselling flavour, Juice Burst Apple, front of mind of shoppers throughout the summer months.

Punchy To The Core is set to reach over 30 million UK adults and will be seen 174 million times through social and digital activity, nationwide sampling, and disruptive OOH advertising including thousands of bus T-sides and phone kiosk adverts across 21 major UK cities.

How important are independent retailers to your brand?

Every single retailer customer is important to us and that is no different whether you are independent, franchisee, speciality, or one of the mults. It’s a bespoke and tailored approach each time as each customer has different challenges and consumer needs. Everything we do is real – nothing is artificial, from the products we make to the relationships we build.

What trends are occurring in the sector?

Our research shows that 29 per cent of consumers are drinking more fruit juice and juice drinks in comparison to pre-Covid levels⁷, driven by an increased focus on health. When choosing a soft drink, health is now the second most important consideration after taste, with 41 per cent of juice drinkers choosing a product because of its health credentials and 36 per cent preferring products that provide one of their five-a-day⁷.

To maximise the soft drinks opportunity, it’s important for retailers to stock a range of options that can appeal to those shoppers who are seeking out healthier drinks. For many years, we have pursued the approach of including only natural ingredients in our products – with absolutely no added sugar ever – and this has been a key part of our mission as a business.

Describe your brand in three words …

Vibrant Punchy Fruit

¹ IRI Ext Marketplace | 4 week ending data to 18.02.24

² IRI EXT Marketplace | Drink Now Unit Sales Data 18.02.24

³ Nielsen Total Impulse, Val MAT to w/e 27.01.24

⁴ IRI Ext Marketplace Unit Sales Data 12 w.e. 24.12.23

⁵ IRI Ext | Marketplace Value Sales | Data to 09.07.23

⁶ Research commissioned by Purity Soft Drinks, survey of 1,500 UK consumers, 2023

⁷ Research commissioned by Purity Soft Drinks, survey of 1,500 UK consumers, 2023