Sangs reports a year of growth

Following a year of complete change at Sangs (Banff) Ltd, the Scottish water and soft drinks manufacturer has recorded positive progress on its restructuring plans, impacting on both production and sales areas within the business.

In what has proved a challenging trading year with some fierce competition and keen pricing in the market place, Sangs performed well with a 1% growth in value recorded to March 2008. The total soft drinks market grew by 2.9%, also impacted adversely by the wet summer of 2007. The Macduff-based manufacturer attributes its growth to significant investment in marketing, coupled with maintaining good product margins.

“While increasing our sales areas and product portfolio over the year, the company has undergone restructuring resulting in a significant operational cost saving of 20%,” said Sangs Managing Director, Andy Anderson, who bought over the business in July 2007 in a £10.2m friendly MBI with business partner Kenny Webster.

“Working closely with our marketing team, the Rocket Group, we have revamped major brands such as Deveron Spring Water and MacB, investing in packaging that is both modern and vibrant and has proved more appealing to both the retailer and consumer. We have also made changes to our production line, which has seen capacity rise by around 5%.”

Now in the midst of restructuring its sales force to ensure it competes more effectively in an extremely competitive market place, Sangs is busy working with all of their customers to increase sales of core brands. The company will also continue to review its operations and route to market, to achieve further cost reductions in the year ahead.