In 2023, family office investment firm Kliro Capital Partners acquired the UK-based Intercontinental Brands (ICB) in a bid to create a new independent spirits business, which was launched in late 2024 under the name Fortitude Spirits Group.
The business includes three divisions: Fortitude Spirits, which holds the company’s brands; its distribution unit Fortitude Drinks; and ICB Distillers, which bottles and blends Fortitude’s brands, as well as private-label products, at the ICB manufacturing site in Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire.
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Fortitude’s portfolio includes “premium” brands such as Café Solo coffee-flavoured liqueur, Hawksbill Caribbean Spiced Rum and Rozél Rosé vodka, as well as “commercial” offerings like Cactus Jack’s schnapps.
Drinks industry veteran Ed Cottrell, who has held managerial stints at William Grant & Sons, Diageo and alcohol retailer Maritime and Mercantile International in the UAE, was appointed CEO of Fortitude Spirits Group late last year.
Just Drinks sat down with Cottrell to discuss the group’s plans and why the company’s “principal opportunity” lies with its commercial portfolio.
Fiona Holland (FH): Why did Kliro Capital Partners decide to launch Fortitude Spirits Group?
Ed Cottrell (EC): ICB was a chiefly manufacturing-based business in the northeast in Middlesbrough, [a] significant manufacturing site producing a combination of private label and you know, commercial brands that have been customized for both on-trade and off-trade, mainly off-trade businesses and a successful business in its day, and it’s 30 years old.
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By GlobalDataThe business was acquired by Kliro Capital, mostly Warren Scott who’s now my chairman, with the ambition to use [the] really well-established assets and team to not only improve and update their products and brand proposition to the market but also add premium brands to that model. To use the revenue generated by the previous business’ model to start to develop a premium brand portfolio and that’s what’s happened. I’m taking on the business with a nascent premium brand portfolio, but also a really successful commercial brand business and a wide network of established partners and customers, which is a terrific base from which to build.
FH: What are some examples of these commercial brands?
EC: Cococariba, which is a coconut cream, we have something called Veroni Amaretto, we have an Irish cream called Carthy’s Country Cream, and we’ve got a flavoured schnapps range called Cactus Jack’s. They’re successful brands… and they’re providing people with better value, often similar or even higher quality liquid at a lower price point, and often the lower ABV as well in subcategories like flavoured spirits, liqueurs, particularly those two which are hot categories which are trending.
On top of that, particularly in the economic context in the UK at the moment, we can provide on-trade retailers, for example, pubs in leased or tenanted pub sector or smaller community pubs, with good value alternatives or brands that sit within those subcategories, which give them a better chance to [see] greater profits and help their business.
I feel that this clutch of commercial brands is going to benefit from the kind of divergence that’s going to happen over the next couple of years and the next year or so in the UK, wherein a number of factors, whether it’s increased duty, green taxes that are coming in, less money in people’s pocket, but also less money in the pocket of small businesses. These brands are coming in as quite good commercial alternatives for them. The stage is well set for their success, and indeed, they’re already successful. That’s a really nice and quite immediate platform that we can continue to build on.
FH: Is the UK Fortitude’s main market?
EC: The UK is our only market at the moment. However, we have – and not just because of me joining – ambitions to move it beyond the UK shores. I think initially nearshore, so Ireland, southern Europe, Scandinavia but, as we get into next year, we’ll be looking further afield.
Alongside a number of other things, I hope I do bring nearly ten years of international experience in Singapore and in the Middle East, so a network and a kind of how-to guidebook about export, which I absolutely intend to bring into play, particularly with our premium brands.
FH: Are there new markets the business plans to enter in 2025?
EC: Not completely set but some really good conversations. These things take time – and this is very much the beginning of our journey – but some real interest particularly in the premium brands because they’re expanding in terms of the number of brands in those in those subcategories.
There’s some real excitement from consumers about particularly liqueurs and flavoured spirits where we’re playing. Café Solo, for example, is an exciting brand. It’s offering something richer, more premium and lower sugar levels than some of the competitors in that coffee liqueur subcategory.
Coming into the marketplace, both domestically and internationally, with a really good, agile manufacturing capability, a really good set of brands across a number of different price points and our ability to be a bit more commercial with our partners, means that we’re well-set.
FH: Are your brands sold equally across on- and off-trade?
EC: We’re mainly off a UK off-trade and wholesale route-to-market business. However, we have recently recruited a good on-trade sales manager who is already making great inroads into on-trade customers across the UK, so we’re feeling very confident with that as well.
FH: What are the groups’ main growth opportunities in the next year?
EC: I’d start by saying that we really want to make the most of our manufacturing facility and our investments into that facility. Right at the base of our plans, we want to increase the number of cases that we are producing and that will be in a number of different areas. That will be in more of our kind of bulk contract distilling and bottling. It will also be in our private label as a kind of base layer.
But then also moving onto our portfolio of commercial brands, which are the ones that are showing real signs of scale and growth at the moment, I would say that’s probably our principal opportunity and then, more medium-term, would be our clutch of premium brands.
FH: How much has been spent at the Middlesbrough facility? Is a specific amount being invested over a period of time?
EC: The exact investment I wouldn’t feel comfortable disclosing but it was a significant additional investment over and above the acquisition of the business.
Effectively, a new bottling line, much more up-to-date, to add to the four existing bottling lines, that’s significantly weighted our capability and agility because it’s a bottling line that we can change and it won’t stop there. We are looking at improving that capability beyond bottles to potentially canning and bottle size differentiation as well.
FH: How much are you looking to increase volumes in the next 12 months?
EC: I think that the best way of answering that question is to lay out a three-year ambition… so to be able to say we’re looking to more than double our business over the next three years in terms of revenue, I think gives you the right signal for our ambition. Because we are playing in the right sub-categories, namely flavoured spirits and liqueurs, and we have different price points to play at. We feel particularly well set to do that from our own brand perspective.
On top of that, private label and contract distilling, particularly private label, offering consumers quality at a better price is a similar strategic direction for us and allows us a deeper relationship with a lot of our retailers. We understand that consumers want value, and particularly, over the next 12 months or so, as the UK economy recovers, we’re really well placed to provide that.
FH: What percentage of annual sales does private label make up?
EC: That’s about a third of our business.
FH: How do you see the spirits market at the moment? How do you expect this to evolve in the next year?
EC: It’s broadly flat, or we’re just under flat in the UK at the moment, and the forecast isn’t great. Particularly with compounding duty increases, the sustainability measures which are going to increase cost of goods, continuing uncertainty in terms of the trading relationship with Europe and further afield, notably the US. It is going to be a challenging environment, no doubt.
I would prefer to be in an organisation [like Fortitude Spirits Group] that is almost starting from a new page, a blank sheet, with a really good manufacturing facility, good people and good agility in what we can do and what we can create. We are already playing with some relatively established and new brands in two good categories, flavoured spirits and liqueurs, which have been growing over the last couple of years at a growth rate significantly above some of the more mainstream categories. I feel that we’re well placed to deliver growth in a relatively flat category.
FH: Do you agree that consumers are still opting for more premium options? What does ‘premium’ mean in your view?
EC: I do think the outlook is evolving. If you’d asked me during Covid or pre-Covid about particularly the younger generation: yes, [they’re] going out less, yes, drinking less, of course, drinking more premium brands with stories, brands with great sustainable credentials. That’s very much been a kind of consumer journey over the last five years and I don’t think that’s going away.
People want quality. However, I think you can add that people are looking for value and, if you can deliver quality at better value, you’re on to an even better consumer story.
Eating and drinking in the on-trade and hospitality at the moment is more expensive. There are more costs coming into that industry, particularly around employment, National Insurance. It will remain a relatively high price. It’ll still be fun, it will still be something people aspire to do but they’ll be more choiceful and I think they will also look for value now as well.
FH: Might M&A play a role in growing the business in the next few years?
EC: Our owner Kliro Capital is a specialist investor in our sector and a number of others. I definitely think that Kliro keeps thinking about opportunities in the marketplace ahead of us.
My priority in the next 12-18 months is to absolutely get the business that we currently have, including our premium bands, into a really good revenue growth phase and so I won’t be actively looking at M&A. I would expect our owners Kliro to be looking for me to consolidate the business and get that growth story really firing. That would be my expectation but absolutely we will not count out the possibility, given you know they are specialist investors in the area.
FH: You mentioned the company mainly operates in flavoured spirits and liqueurs. If you were looking to NPD would you stick to those two areas?
EC: No is the answer to that. We would be looking at outside of that. One of our three premium brands is a rum brand [Hawksbill]. So rum, particularly golden rum, spiced rum, has been growing well as a sub-category over the last few years. We can continue to look at that and other categories that pop up. As I say, we have the manufacturing facility to look at that.
The one thing that I haven’t explained is that… we have a distribution business, Fortitude Drinks UK, which is a model that we can use to take on third-party brands. We’re having some really good discussions with third-party brands to put through our distribution business as a complement to our own brands. That’s something where we are not innovating in our own category, [but] we can build a portfolio of complementary third-party brands that [we] feel that fits with us, either at the premium level, or at the valuable mainstream level. That’s an exciting element to talk to what we can offer… we are in the process of building that into our plan.
