£1.2m investment for cider-maker
DEVON cider producer Sandford Orchards has invested £1.2million into its manufacturing plant during the coronavirus pandemic and is also carrying out a rebrand.
The Crediton-based company, one of the fastest growing challenger brands in the cider industry, has expanded its bottling and canning capabilities and is developing and implementing a new branding strategy.
Sandford Orchards, whose ethos is to produce the best tasting cider “done right”, said it is now well placed to meet an increased demand for real cider driven by a strong consumer interest in authenticity and quality.
Barny Butterfield, chief cidermaker, said: “Whilst other businesses have retrenched during the past 12 months, we have taken the opportunity to press forward with our expansion plans buoyed by an ever-growing number of consumers who are looking for an antidote to the standard commercial cider brands. At the end of 2019, we made the strategic decision to invest heavily in a full rebrand and we appointed awardwinning branding agency Kingdom and Sparrow and market research agency Branding Express, who conducted focus groups across the UK.
“Blind tastings showed that consumers unanimously agreed that our cider tasted delicious, more natural and flavourful than mainstream alternatives.
“Our research also confirmed that there was a great opportunity for us, as our ciders are far higher quality than the cheap mass produced ciders available but more accessible than the pricey craft options.
“This gave us the confidence to continue to invest in 2020 with the implementation of the rebrand and an expansion of our packaging capability to include setting up our own canning line for the first time.”
He said that at the beginning of the first lockdown, from March 2020, Sandford’s usual canning business became too busy to provide the firm with the capacity it needed.
“We knew that canned cider offered us a huge potential market, as it is not well served by quality craft ciders, so we took the plunge and invested in our own in-house canning line, which delivers 3,500 cans of cider per hour,” he said.
“In the same period we also purchased brand new state-of-the-art bottling machinery to allow us to meet the growing demand for our products and match our ambitious projections. This has tripled our bottling rate to an impressive 6,000 bottles an hour. Alongside this, we have also increased automation in our kegging line, thus ensuring that we control the whole process from orchard to glass and have the ability to meet future demands.”
Mr Butterfield added: “We believe that we make the best tasting cider and we are proud to do it properly taking a fresh, natural, low impact approach and using the best apples in the world. With our new branding and expanded capacity we are starting 2021 in a strong position to meet the needs of our fast growing fan base as well as those consumers wanting to trade up to something more authentic and better tasting."