Fruit Juice
November/December 2001

Choose your range with care

In the past few years, things have been less than rosy for fruit juice manufacturers. Juice manufacture is a comparatively easy industry for small manufacturers to enter and the major manufacturers have been hampered by competition from smaller players, some of whom sometimes pay low spot-prices for fruit.

Heavy price competition has eroded wholesale margins, leaving manufacturers with precious little budgets for innovation or brand building. Juice was rapidly being seen by the consumer as a commodity. When was the last time you saw a TV ad for juice?

In October 1999, National Foods sold all of its juice brands to Berri Limited, an Australian company with a long track record in the juice market. Spring Valley followed suit early this year, when its juice brands were acquired by Cadbury Schweppes, which has also added Pepsi to its stable of brands.

These two companies account for over seventy-five per cent of the juice business at petroleum style convenience stores, with Original Juice also featuring strongly among the top sellers. A dozen or more manufacturers are fighting over the balance and have been successful in wresting market share at other types of route convenience outlets (see table).

Whether it comes from watered down concentrate or freshly squeezed fruit, in glass or Tetra pack, juice is an expensive product to produce. The convenience channel, with large numbers of retail outlets selling mostly small volumes, is an expensive one for juice manufacturers to service. To make matters worse, a proliferation of brands, styles and pack sizes has done nothing to simplify things for retailers.

ACNielsen C*Track, which ranks sales at convenience outlets, lists an unbelievable 181 juice variants currently being stocked at Australian convenience stores. The top 20 sellers account for only about 50 per cent of total sales. According to ACNielsen figures, convenience retailers would need to stock 50 different juice products in order to meet the first preference selections for three out of every four customers.

Juice competes with carbonated beverage, energy drinks, water and milk which, together, account for 21 per cent of average convenience store sales. (AACS SOI Report 2000). Juice makes up less than 9 per cent of soft drink business and just over 5 per cent of refrigerated beverage dollar sales. This means that juice should be allocated about half a door in an average ten-door fridge beverage display. Smaller outlets would give it two or three shelves.

As a rule of thumb, for every $8 of carbonated drinks, the average convenience store should be selling $1 worth of juice. If your juice sales are below par, it would be worthwhile to reconsider the range you are carrying and its space and position in the fridge.

With such a small space allocation, retailers should be aware that most customers will have to opt for something other than their preferred brand when they make their selection from the fridge. This makes it important to choose the retail range with some care and to adjust the mix to suit the customer base. With such pressure on facings, no retailer should continue to stock any juice variant that moves slowly.

TABLE 1. The table below shows the ACNielsen figures for each manufacturer's share of sales at route outlets (corner stores and so on) compared with petrol-style convenience outlets. Petroleum is dominated by the two major manufacturers, who have a smaller share of the business at other route outlets.

Table 1. Fruit Juice
Dollar shares
by Manufacturer
	Route	C*Track
	%	%
Cad. Schweppes	23.9	29.5
Berrivale Co	21.1	46.1
The Daily Juice Co	11.7
Nippys	7.3
Origional F.J. Co	6.9	9.5
Pacific Orchard	5.8
Macquarie Valley	5.4
Orchy	4.3
Crusta	3.6
Golden Circle	2.7	1.7
Speciality Waters		3.4
Bev Pak		0.6
Harvey		0.1
Others	7.3	9.1

ACNIelsen C*Track 3 months to June 2001

Table 2.The table below shows ACNielsen C*Track figures for the Top Fifty sellers at petroleum convenience stores for the three months to June 2001.

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	Table 2.
	Fruit Juice Top 50 Sellers
	at Convenience Stores
		SHARE %
1	Daily Orange Nas 2lt	8.0
2.	Daily Orange Nas 500ml	6.9
3.	Daily Or P'free P'top 500m	4.6
4.	Spring Valley Orange Jce 375ml	4.4
5.	Daily Orange Nas 1lt	3.4
6.	Spring Valley Apple Jce 375ml	3.4
7.	Original Orange 500ml	3.1
8.	Daily Orange Nas 300ml	3.0
9.	Spring Valley App/Blcrnt 375ml	2.9
10	Spring Valley Mngo/Banna 375ml	2.6
11	Spring Valley Oran/Mango 375ml	2.3
12	Daily Or/Mng 35% 500ml	1.5
13	Spring Valley Pineapple 375ml	1.4
14	Original Orange Fresh 2lt	1.4
15	Daily Psnfrt 35% 500ml	1.4
16	Spring Valley Orange Jce 1lt	1.3
17	Spring Valley Orng/Pass 375ml	1.3
18	Daily Orange 35% 500ml	1.3
19	Spring Valley Tomato Jce 375ml	1.2
20	Squeeze Orange 35% 2lt	1.1
21	Just Juice Tropical Nas 1 Lt	1.0
22	Spring Valley Apple Jce 1lt	0.9
23	Just Juice 100% Apple 1lt	0.8
24	Original Orange 1lt	0.8
25	Aust Fresh Orange 500ml	0.8
26	Spring Valley Orange Jce 250ml	0.8
27	Spring Valley App/Blcrnt 1lt	0.7
28	Pure & Natural Orange Nas 1lt	0.7
29	Just Juice Parads Pch 1lt	0.7
30	Berri 100 Apple Nas 2lt	0.7
31	Spring Valley Mngo/Banna 1lt	0.6
32	Just Juice 100% Apple 250ml	0.6
33	Original Blk Lb Orange 600ml	0.6
34	Original Blk Lb Orange 1.5lt	0.6
35	Berri 100 Orange Nas 2lt	0.6
36	Spring Valley Apple Jce 250ml	0.6
37	S.R Juice Orange Jce 2lt	0.6
38	Pure & Natural Apple 1lt	0.6
39	Just Juice Tropical 250ml	0.5
40	Just Juice Parads Pch 250ml	0.5
41	Spring Valley App/Blcrnt 250ml	0.5
42	Ribena Blackcrrnt Rtd 250ml	0.5
43	Original Orange 300ml	0.5
44	Squeeze Oran/Mango 35% 2lt	0.5
45	Just Juice Ornge/Mngo 1lt	0.5
46	Mountain Fresh Tropical Jce 400ml	0.5
47	Just Juice Apl/Blkcrt 1lt	0.5
48	Aust Fresh Orange 2lt	0.4
49	Mountain Fresh Apl/Guava Jc 400ml	0.4
50	Daily Appl/Blknt 500ml	0.4
ACNielsen C*Track 3 months to June 2001. Retail dollar sales share of total juice sales

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