Rising demand pushes up revenues 4.8 per cent at Pepsi's UK unit Britvic

Rising demand for Britvic's fizzy drinks including Pepsi and 7Up in the UK helped it push revenues 4.8 per cent to £303.2 million in the three months to today.

The drinks group, which makes and sells PepsiCo brands in Britain and Ireland, also revealed plans to accelerate distribution of its Fruit Shoot drink across the US from nine states to 30 by the summer.

Profit at the company was last year damaged by the drink's faulty cap.

The company has also agreed to a redistribution of the Fruit Shoot deal across Spain from early this year. It added production levels of the drink were now back to the pre-cap crisis.

The company is meanwhile awaiting approval from the Office of Fair Trading on its merger with Irn-Bru maker AG Barr.

Britvic's £1.4-billion merger with the maker of Irn-Bru would create one of the largest European soft beverages businesses (See: Pepsi backs Britvic-Barr deal to create European beverage leader), and would increase the distribution of Fruit Shoot to 30 American states, it revealed yesterday. The children's drink was also set for launch in Spain in the spring.