Lucozade Ribena Suntory cuts sugar to avoid tax charge

“We are changing our complete portfolio at Lucozade Ribena Suntory,”​ Dr Naomi Grant, the company’s director of research and development for GB and Ireland, told a sugar reduction policy seminar, organised by the Westminster Food & Nutrition Forum.

“We are taking out 50% of sugar this year across the whole portfolio and that actually means that for each drink they’ll be 4.5g of sugar per 100ml or less,”​ said Grant.

‘Taking out 50% of sugar’​

“So we are going to make sure for each brand that we have a zero calorie or no added sugar variant.​

“That’s a massive change for us, but we also recognise that that is not enough, so we are actually committing £30M of investment across the next three years to get more people exercising and starting that with our own employees.”​

She explained the difficulties the company had encountered in making such radical changes to its well-known 90-year heritage UK brands, which now make use of low-calorie sweeteners.

Radical changes​

The former owner of these soft drinks brands, GlaxoSmithKline, sold them to Japanese company Suntory towards the end of 2013. “In 2014 we took the brands on a new journey,”​ said Grant.

Under the soft drinks sugar tax, there will be two bands one at 18p per litre (p/l) for total sugar content above 5g per 100ml and a second, higher band at 24p/l for the most sugary drinks with more than 8g per 100ml.

A major obstacle the firm faced, has been to explain to those with type 1 diabetes, who used Lucozade to control their body glucose levels – as well as to those using it for the pregnancy glucose tolerance test – what the reformulation changes meant for them.