THE M.E.N.’S AWARD-WINNING BUSINESS EDITOR You need lots of bottle with this line of work
THE aroma of wine wafts through the air at one of the UK’s biggest independent suppliers of wines and spirits. On a long conveyor belt, several hundred tall green bottles are ready to be filled and capped before heading out for public consumption.
For wine lovers, this is heaven. On average British drinkers crack through 108 bottles of wine a year and at least one in eight of those bottles would have gone through Kingsland Drinks in Irlam.
This heritage business, which employs more than 400 people, operates on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal, which is used to transport wine from Liverpool docks to the bottling plant, a former Co-op soap works.
It pumps around 127m litres of wine and spirits a year making it one of the busiest suppliers in the UK and is about to get even busier with the addition of a new canning production line catapulting the company into the canned wine market.
For managing director Ed Baker it’s an exciting time for the business and in his role which he declares is the ‘best job in the world.’
“I’ve worked in several fun industries in my career from motor cars, banking, gin and vodka and even football, but I love the variety of wine, I love a product that I can know, appreciate, understand and care about,” he tells me.
Kingsland has been supplying and bottling wines for more than 50 years. It was originally owned by The Co-operative Wholesale Society in the 1960s, whereby the company invested in its first filling lines and placed itself on the wine map. It has since acquired Stratford Wines and Bottle Green Wines and heavily invested in facilities which enables the company’s single site to meet a range of needs across the ‘on trade’ and ‘off trade’ for every consumer occasion.
It was the very first company in the UK to import and fill wine in bulk – now accounting for 40 per cent of UK wine.
Today it supplies wines – which come from all over the world including Australia, New Zealand,
South Africa and South America – to the Co-op, Waitrose, Ocado, Majestic, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons as well as the discount retailers.
In the last five years alone, Kingsland has installed a carbonation line, reinstated its onsite winery, introduced new high-speed bottling lines and expanded its new product development capabilities with a new laboratory focused on future-thinking and insights-driven product development.
It has also upgraded its capacity to bottle spirits and package new and emerging formats.
“Kingsland provides a complete solution for our customers,” says Baker.
This includes sourcing a wine in a particular country through its supply base all the way through to coming up with a brand concept and design via its marketing team to bringing the product in from overseas to providing all the dry goods including the bottles and caps.
An effective supply chain management ensures Kingsland keeps up with supply and demand as well as quickly adapting to ongoing changes around the world which can affect the currency and therefore the prices.
“At the moment Argentinian Malbec is relatively cheap because of problems with the Argentinian currency compared to what it’s been in the past so there’s probably demand for more people going down the Malbec route,” says Baker.
“As a business, we try and stay nimble so we can react to customer demand quickly.”
While Brits are known for enjoying a glass or two, the consumption of wine has slowed down and has remained flat for the past two years, says Baker.
But that’s not bad news for Kingsland which has seen opportunities to diversify its products such as growing its spirits business which accounts for 5pc of revenues.
Says Baker: “That’s part of the reason why we have looked within our business and have expanded the scope of what we do to adapt to the market and offer different solutions to our end customers.
“We invested in carbonisation capabilities so we are able to do spritz products and sparkling products, we brought in British Winery so we’re able to do fermented based products so we can make mulled wine and mixed fusion drinks because we can see that’s where the market can potentially be heading.
“At the same time we recognise the spirits sector has also been growing, particularly gin, and so we have invested in new filling and bottling capabilities so we can actually better satisfy the spirit market.”
Being able to provide a mix of products has led to Kingsland to invest £1.2m in a new canning production line which will have the ability to produce 80m cans per year with the potential to increase with demand.
The first run will be a new canned wine brand for a major retailer to be announced shortly.
Baker says: “Our investment in the canning line taps directly into consumer appetite for a trend we’re confident will continue to gain momentum in the years ahead.”