Our management team has extensive multinational experience and a background in leading global FMCG and alcoholic beverage companies.

The team also has a strong track record of integrating acquired companies, reorganising operations and transferring resources and expertise across sites, skills critical for effective integration of future acquisitions.

Find out more about our management team

Our rigorous approach to business processes combines global FMCG best practice with deep local insight in each of our core markets.

We focus on end-to-end business improvement and aim to add value across the entire business spectrum - from procurement, production and business processes through to sales and marketing, portfolio expansion and consumer insight.

This approach encompasses, among other activity, consumer-led brand planning and development; investment in the quality and depth of our sales force; a conscious approach to distribution channel optimisation; investment in facilities and in our employees; and central procurement to attain economies of scale.

We have more than 45 brands across a broad range of spirits products. Many of these brands have market or category-leading positions in the Group's core geographic markets.

Poland: #2 in clear vodka, flavoured vodka and vodka-based liqueurs¹
Czech Republic: #1 in spirits, bitters, rum and vodka²
Italy: #1 in vodka, vodka-based liqueurs and limoncello³

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¹ Nielsen Poland total off trade, MAT retail sales volume and value September 2019
² Nielsen Czech Republic, total off trade, MAT retail sales volume and value September 2019
³ IRI Italy, total modern off trade MAT retail sales volume and value September 2019

Poland and the Czech Republic are the Group's two largest markets. In the Czech Republic, we have the largest market share for spirits and in Poland we are in a strong second position.

These are the second and third largest economies in the Central and Eastern European region respectively and are projected by the Economist Intelligence Unit to have GDP growth over the next five years.

Poland and the Czech Republic also have a tradition of relatively high per capita spirits consumption.

The Central and Eastern European region is characterised by limited sales of international premium spirits brands. Our main competitors in our key markets are typically local operators.

The Group has a broad distribution platform in its core geographic markets, a significant competitive advantage in Central and Eastern European markets where local brands are dominant.

We have local sales and marketing operations in seven countries including Poland and the Czech Republic as well as third-party distributors for sales of our products into more than 50 countries worldwide. We have long-standing relationships with all of our top customers and tailor our sales and marketing strategy to the target market.

We also use our established distribution platform to distribute certain third-party brands.

We have a strong track record of developing successful new products.

For example, Saska and Amundsen Expedition, launched in Poland during 2015, together achieved MAT value growth significantly ahead of the market, at +52% year on year versus total vodka MAT value growth at c.5.6%¹.

Our new product development (NPD) programme provides a structured framework that expedites our ability to launch new products and variants of existing products.

¹Source: Nielsen total vodka, total Poland, total off-trade, MAT September 2019

The Group believes the spirits industry in the Central and Eastern European region and certain other European countries offers significant acquisition-led growth opportunities and that there is limited local or international competition for assets in this region.

The Central and Eastern European countries plus certain neighbouring European countries in which the Group is not active currently had an aggregate spirits market volume of 101.8 million 9 litre equivalent cases¹ according to IWSR 2018 data.

We may also consider acquisition targets in other locations where we can leverage our current platform.

¹ Source: IWSR 2018

We believe that our production plant in Poland is one of the largest and fastest bottling plants, and has the fastest single spirit bottling line, in Europe. The Group has production capacity to support significant further volume growth.

All of the Group's production capacity (excluding the capacity of its ethanol production facility in Germany) is located in Central and Eastern Europe, which are low cost compared to Western Europe.