Robinsons gets squashed by supermarket price war

Robinsons, Britain's most popular soft drink, is to be revamped after the supermarket price war caused a fall in sales.

Britvic, the owner of Robinsons, plans to "refresh" the still soft drink next spring with new packaging, new flavours and a new advertising campaign.

Robinsons was created in the changing rooms at Wimbledon in 1935 when Eric Smedley Hodgson invented lemon barley water for the players and umpires. Today it is the most popular soft drink in Britain based on the amount drunk.

However, Britvic warned in its annual results that sales of its still soft drinks have fallen by 5pc in the last year.

The company put the decline, which was measured by millions of litres sold, down to changing shopping habits and consumers switching to own-brand supermarket drinks. J20, another Britvic brand, is also struggling. Revenues for still soft drinks fell by 1.4pc in total, with the market down 1.2pc.

Simon Litherland, chief executive of Britvic, said the company would not slash the price of Robinsons and instead focus on emphasising the quality of the drink.

He said: "Growth in our stills portfolio is crucial to our future success and is a priority for us.

"Whilst our overall performance has been below what we wanted to achieve this year, there have been positive highlights.

"Robinsons continued to lead the squash category, and although we have seen increased competition from private-label which impacted our volume, our focus has been to protect price and maintain our brand equity."

Shares in Britvic fell by 41.50, or 6pc, to 655p following the results for the 52 weeks to September 28. Thid was the despite the company reporting a 1.7pc increase in revenues to £1.34bn and a 23pc rise in pre-tax profits to £133m, with the company making progress with its plans to grow outside the UK.