This comes on the back of 113% growth in profitability in Q4. They also made 1% more year-on-year.
Why so? This could be because international market turmoil (in particular tariffs or the threat of tariffs) has prompted customers to look at options closer to home. And others have raced to put more orders through to work around the stop-start nature of tariff threats.
In addition, steadily falling bank rates are starting to stimulate the economy.
Another factor is that it’s part a natural cycle: the beverage industry usually performing well in Q1.
The data has been put together by Unleashed, a cloud-based inventory management software company which assesses the state of the industry via its Unleashed Manufacturing Health Index report. That allows it to compare the state of the beverage industry to others, with 12 categories including electronics & telecoms, sport & entertainment and industrial machinery. The report draws on data from more than 600 UK manufacturers.
The beverage manufacturers included in the report are typically small, independent challenger brands, with 2-25 employees and generally under £4m ($5.42m) in annual revenue.
The beverages industry historically enjoys a strong Q1. “It’s hard to pin down a reason, especially with so many different business models in the category,” Greg Roughan, content manager at Unleashed, told us.
“It may be that deals in the pipeline in the approach to Christmas are closed when the new year begins, while whole distributors begin placing orders in preparation for summer peak demand.
“Ultimately the main trend we see in the data is less about specifically when orders fall during the year, but rather the overall growth and recovery in the beverages category, where average sales per beverage manufacturer rose from £874,000 (Q2 2023 to Q1 2024) to £1.249 million (Q2 2024 to Q1 2025), a 43% increase.”
