The aroma of earthy wine wafts through the air at one of the 海角视频’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 sweet 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 海角视频 and is about to get even busier with the addition of a new canning production line catapulting the company into the canned wine market.
‘Best job in the world’
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.
Most Read
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 海角视频 to import and fill wine in bulk - now accounting for 40% of 海角视频 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.
Argentinian Malbec
Don’t miss
“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.
“Due to issues with the climate in Australia and strong demand coming from the Chinese market we could see prices for Australian wine going up so you’re always having to balance supply and demand as well as multi-locations and also different flavour profile types to match that.
“As a business, we try and stay nimble so we can react to customer demand quickly.”
Explaining further, Baker says: “If a customer comes along and says they want to find a Uruguayan tenet then through our wine buying team we will be able to identify a producer who can supply that to the end customer.
“We also have an insights team that focuses on what the end consumer is looking for.
“As we are very much a branded B2B business consequentially the insight we are getting is designed to best suit our customer needs and best reflect what’s going on in the market.
“This means we can identify trends and then be able to say ‘this looks like it’s going to be more fashionable going forward and therefore you need to be sourcing more of this.’”
Mulled wine and mixed fusion drinks
Asked about current trends, Baker tells me demand for Prosecco is starting to slow down and within the sparkling wine arena, French wines such as Cremant d’Alsace are actually coming back into fashion and is cheaper to consume than Champagne.
Within the reds market, Malbec is now the most popular grape while in the white wine market Pinot Grigio has taken a step back and there’s a trend towards aromatic whites such as Riesling, although Baker’s favourite is the fresh and aromatic Austrian wine, Gruner Veltliner.
He says: “We are seen as an independent source because ultimately we want what’s best for our end customer.
“We work with most of the major multiples and we feel we have a good representation with most of them including Tesco, the Co-op, Morrisons, and M&S but we also work with some of the big players in the overall wine industry as well as representation on the trade side with strategic partners including Whitbread and Greene King.”
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 5% 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.
“We also supply non-alcoholic ‘wines’ such as celebration products for people including non-alcoholic champagne and other non-alcoholic spirit replacements. That’s a very fast growing market.”
Changing habits
He continues: “We are adapting our capabilities to ensure that even if wine, which will always be important and is the main part of our business, slows down, we are able to grow where the market is growing and adapt to those market changes.
“Ultimately, most wine is bought by consumers from the major multiples and so there are relatively limited number of customers you are playing with and therefore it is important to offer them multiple services particularly if wine as a category becomes slightly less attractive for them to invest in.”
In terms of changing consumer habits, younger customers are not consuming wine as much as previous generations.
“They are drinking differently and therefore we have to ensure that they are introduced to wine in the right way and in the right context and enjoy it in the right circumstances,” says Baker.
“But also if they decided not to drink or reduce their consumption we are able to provide other products as well.”
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.
“Our investment places us at the forefront of the canned wine segment with a new capability which further asserts our position as a destination drinks company offering a full category solution.”
Gross sales for 2018/2019 reached £290m with net sales of £181m.
That’s up from £165m gross sales and net sales of £90m in 2013 when Baker joined the business as finance director.
“We’ve had steady growth and we’ve been investing considerably in capital expenditure to ensure our kit is top.
“Our site might be old but in terms of the bottling kit we operate at the highest level.
“Over the past five years, we have spent between £2.5m and £4.6m each year on new capital equipment to ensure we are very much ahead of the game and that we’re meeting the highest quality.”
Gin and vodka
To ensure the longevity of the business significant changes to the board were made last year.
It saw previous managing director Andy Sagar take up the new role of executive chairman after 14 years at the helm to enable him to focus on the company’s strategic growth agenda.
Baker took on the role of managing director with responsibility for the day-to-day running of Kingsland Drinks as well as developing the company’s ambition to be “the destination drinks company of choice.”
So far it’s been a ‘dream job’ for Baker who has had a varied career.
He trained as an accountant with PwC and later joined Rothschild as an investment banker before leaving to join Ford Motor Company.
He also spent three years in Amsterdam working for Mitsubishi.
Baker decided to return to the 海角视频 to start a family and joined British Vita working for its technical foams division.
He later moved to Coventry FC as finance director describing the business of football as ‘tough.’
Baker then moved into the food and drinks arena when he went to work for G&J Greenall looking after gin and vodka ‘before seeing the light’ and moving into wines.
He says: “I have worked in industrial chemicals and I really couldn’t get excited about that.
“Here I love the fact I get to work with products we care about. There’s a massive variety and it changes all the time.
“I enjoy the challenge of dealing with multiple different category groups, looking at where wine is coming from next year, what’s going to be the right location to buy from, what price point are we going to be able to hit, so it’s constantly changing and is different from some other industries.
“I can make Coca Cola every single year because I know what the price point will be because I know the raw ingredients and nothing changes.
“Here you’ve got dynamics changing all the time in terms of trends, interest, supply and demand and most of all it’s a nice industry to work in.”