UK-based Canned Wine Group is looking to raise more funds by the end of 2025 as it looks to grow headcount and expand the presence of its on-draught keg line.
Speaking to Just Drinks at London Wine Fair last week, co-founder and CEO Simon Rollings said the money would be used for “working capital”, to build its sales and marketing teams and scale the on-tap line for its Copper Crew brand.
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Rollings said the single-serve wines business was looking to raise £3m ($4m), mostly from new investors and was in talks with several venture capital firms. It has so far raised £2m to date.
Canned Wine Group launched its 20 litre wine kegs in the UK in March and is looking to expand the presence of those in the UK and Ireland, the latter of which it entered last week.
Co-founder Ben Franks told Just Drinks the Copper Crew keg line was being well received, especially following the introduction of the Extended Producer Responsibility scheme, which came into force in the UK last month.
The policy requires producers to report how much packaging they put into the market and pay associated rates per tonnage.
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By GlobalData“There’s… some really interesting restaurant groups and pub groups and so on that see the benefits with EPR coming in and switching to that new format,” Franks explained.
Rollings also said the move into kegs responded to a significant demand.
“Part of that is being driven by EPR, part of it by sustainability,” he said. “It’s also about service, so rather than having staff refilling fridges, they’re serving customers. Because changing your keg over is instant, whereas filling a fridge is time consuming, and you’re not doing what you should be doing as a bar[tender], waiter, waitress, which is serving customers and delivering a very great experience.”
Speaking on future plans, Franks said down the line that the company wanted to increase the number of brands in its portfolio, which it might do through M&A or in-house.
“We’re looking at where does that fit, what the opportunities are in the market, either through acquisition of creating our own,” he said. “So, building on this idea of being a brand house that has multiple brands for different occasions”.
Canned Wine Group’s portfolio includes Canned Wine Co. and Copper Crew, which it acquired in 2023.
The UK is Canned Wine Group’s main market. It also sells to the Netherlands, France, Greece, Malta and now Ireland.
Speaking to Just Drinks in 2023, the business said it had ambitions to bring its products to the US.
Last week, Rollings said that interest was still there, but that the market was “not something we’re proactively going after at this stage”, adding there was plenty of “scope” to build the business in the UK and “nearer markets like Netherlands and Ireland”.
The group sees the US as an “enormous opportunity” but also a “challenge in terms of scaling to that size”, he said.
“Obviously, as a business that is focused on sustainability, there’s probably different ways in which we can set the business plan to serve the US market. So that’s a case of we will do it at some point, and we’ll just wait until the time is right and really try to do it well.”
