The report was compiled and authored by Matthew Langley, who is a food and drink insights, strategy and brand expert with more than 19 years’ experience. He previously authored the first four editions of the Weston’s category report, the annual analysis on the cider category. It also includes commentary and predictions from industry and category experts, including Waitrose buyer John Vine, consumer insights director alcohol at Kantar Worldpanel Tom Mallett, and CGA Strategy’s Tom Mulcauley.

The revamp would seek to capitalise on RTD category growth, while disassociating from the term “hard seltzer”, Drty said. After fermentation, the mix is blended with purified sparkling water and natural fruit flavours to create the end product. Not only that, Clements believes the use of the word ‘vodka’ better enables them to play in the RTD space, opening up possibilities to work with other spirits categories on seltzer products. In the on-trade, the report noted that venues should consider giving at least two spaces in fridges to hard seltzers. The report said hard seltzer consumers are more likely to visit on-trade venues, have more disposable income and are willing to spend more on high-quality products. New beverage brand Drty has launched a 4% ABV ‘zero-carb’ hard seltzer in two flavours, as it looks to bring the drinks trend to the UK.I think the category was probably overhyped in 2019/2020 but there is definitely still a place for it on retailers’ shelves,” he says. “We think that seltzer will form a sub-segment of RTD rather than a category of it’s own, and maybe be slightly smaller in size than many of the predictions suggested.” Kantar data cited by the report also found that more than 1.5m litres of hard seltzer were sold in the UK in the 12 months to 20 November 2020. Since January 2020, the category’s volume grew by 1,087% to 1.57m litres. The report said that the IWSR predicts a UK compound annual growth rate of 71% from 2019 to 2024.

Studio Juice – the brand agency used by Camden Town Brewery, Moju, Karma Drinks and Momo Kombucha – were responsible for the refresh. London-based hard seltzer brand Drty released The Drty Hard Seltzer Handbook, which looks at the origin of the category, other brands in the market, consumer demographics, case studies, market size and future predictions. In addition to supporting category growth, the emergence of hard seltzers should help to further alter perceptions of RTD in the same way that premix products (such as canned gin and tonic) have done so successfully over the past few years. Commenting on the launch, co-founder of Drty Matija Pisk, said: “We wanted to give UK consumers an alternative to high-sugar ciders and calorie-dense beers. Ultimately drinking alcohol is not a healthy activity, so the concept for the brand was born out of this contradiction – a drink that is clean but is still pretty Drty”.The proposed offer for Darty significantly undervalues the group. The structure of the proposed offer does not deliver fair value to all shareholders. It also precludes Darty shareholders from benefiting in line with Fnac shareholders any future cost or revenue synergies. We see a higher price, a full or partial cash alternative and even possibly a dual London listing as some of the remedies for us to alter our view that this deal is not in the interests of all shareholders He says the most common question during sampling was “what’s the alcohol in this?” And further research found the word ‘hard’ was the problem. Darty management has delivered against all its stated objectives, is high quality and has support from a high quality shareholder base. The underlying valuation for the Group and now the proposed offer of 101p, do not reflect these strengths, its strong cash flow profile or the future profit potential for Darty.