Fizz up market
preserve of the well-off. In the 1970s and 1980s, home carbonation became extraordinarily popular and remarkably reached 10 million British homes on the back of the marketing slogan “Get Busy, With the Fizzy.”
The firm went through series of changes of ownership including the big UK-quoted companies, Reckitt & Coleman and Cadbury Schweppes. When Schweppes was spun off from Cadbury, the company was snapped up by is Israeli distributor, Soda-Club with the assistance of private equity.
Birnbaum, a relaxed figure, took over in 2010 and has been focused on turn ing the enterprise around and as a challenger to the bottling giants. He earned his spurs as chief executive of sportswear giant Nike in Israel.
He is a robust defender of the company’s West Bank plant, its management and workforce, and vows he will not give in to the pressure of those who wish to close down the Ecostream outlet in Brighton.
He has a huge amount of work to do as parent SodaStream had been neglected for three decades as it moved from one corporate empire to another.
“It used to be awful,” he admits. “It didn’t taste any good. It didn’t look any good. And it wasn’t even that cheap. We have done a lousy job in years gone by and now we are trying to correct everything.”
It is not without advantage. In Continental Europe it has a good position in the market place, reaching a remarkable 25 per cent of Swedish households. It also has a healthy following in Switzerland and Germany and is available in 44 countries, compared to just 13 five years ago.
In the United States, where there is a long tradition of soda fountains, the company also is making strides and the American operation now accounts for just over one-third of revenue and has seen triple-digit growth in the past year.
No one suggests that SodaStream is going to knock Coke or Pepsi off the soft drinks map. It has a turnover of a relatively modest $400 million against the $100 billion of the world’s two biggest bottlers. Nevertheless, Birnbaum believes his company has the tide of history on its side.
In the UK alone, for instance, Coke and Pepsi generate 35 million cans and bottles every single day in what is a huge environmental threat.
His own offering of carbon dioxide gas cylinders, that sit on the kitchen counter in trendy colours, offers an alternative of creating soft drinks, from root beet to ginger ale, and from economical, naturally-produced syrups.
A few protesters in Brighton look unlikely to divert the company from its ambitions to be the next big wave in fizzy drinks. Alex Brummer is City Editor of the Daily Mail