VOLUME SALES in Ireland of Britvic’s range of soft drinks slumped by 20.2 per cent quarter-on-quarter in the three months to the end of June, the British company said yesterday.

In euro terms, the decline in revenue was 24.3 per cent.

In terms of its year-on-year performance, Britvic earned revenues of €45 million here in the three months to the end of June, compared with €59.6 million in the same quarter of 2008.

In the nine months to the end of June, Britvic earned revenues of €161.7 million, a fall of 17 per cent.

Britvic’s portfolio of soft drinks includes the Irish Club brand and Ballygowan water, which were acquired from CC in 2007 for €249 million.

In spite of the decline in sales here, Britvic chief executive Paul Moody said it remained committed to this market. “We’re going to carry on supporting the [Irish] brands. We believe they are absolutely central to the long-term success of the business so we’re not disinvesting in our [Irish] brands but are keeping a focus on how we get optimum performance,” Mr Moody told The Irish Times. “What we’re looking for are some signs of recovery in the overall economy that we could benefit from.”

When asked if there were any green shoots of recovery in Ireland, Mr Moody said: “To be candid, none that we’ve spotted.”

Mr Moody conceded that the recent sales performance in Ireland was worse than had been expected. “We’d had some encouraging performance through March and April. What we’ve now seen thought May and June is a material deterioration, which is not where we would have expected to be.”

Mr Moody said Britvic had managed to increase it market share in Ireland in spite of the decline in its sales. This indicates that it is outperforming it competitors.

He said the Irish business was on target to achieve cost synergies of €27 million by the end of 2011, more than twice the level announced at the time of the acquisition of the Irish brands.