Broadland to drive international reach with US-based facility in pipeline

By Andrew Catchpole

Published: 24 August, 2017

UK-based Broadland Wineries has revealed that it has plans to build a bottling plant in the States, to further grow the expanding international side of its business in tandem with its domestic operation.

Speaking to Harpers at the company’s Norfolk HQ, CEO Mark Lansley said that the US, along with the Nordic countries, continue to be strong areas of growth for Broadland, which specialises in private label and brand development for the supply of both on and off trade.

The company already has sales teams in place in both the US and Sweden, looking to build upon 20% year-on-year growth since 2006, following a switch from contract bottling to a focus on NPD and private label after Lansley and his business partners rescued Broadland from the receivers.

Lansley is also confident that the fast changing routes of supply in the UK will continue to offer opportunities to those that can provides a more direct service than the traditional supply model.

“The middlemen have been disappearing and this left a space to start selling direct,” said Lansley, referring to the ongoing backdrop of consolidation and failing suppliers.

“We rode that wave, with retailers looking for specialists that could supply finished goods and do that in an efficient and cost effective way,” said Lansley, adding that despite such rapid growth, Broadland “hasn’t chased volume, but continued at a sustainable level of business growth.”

While the UK business continues to thrive, increasing sales in both the Nordic countries and the US have helped pushed turnover up to £60m, with an ambitious projection of achieving £250m by 2025, based on the sustained ongoing expansion of the past years.

“We are aiming, eventually, for £100m in the US,” said Lansley. “And if we can operate and grow in multiple countries, and if you have supermarkets operating in multiple markets, then we can help them out in multiple countries.”

Lansley is looking to increasingly split his time between the UK and US to help drive Broadland’s next phase of expansion where, despite it being a “tough market essentially made up of many different countries”, he belives there is much room for NPD and innovation on the wine front.

A fuller profile of Broadland Wineries will appear in the September print issue of Harpers.

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