The drinks industry in Wales has a turnover of more than £800 million, a Welsh retail sales value of more than £950 million and employs 1,200 people.
The industry in Wales has sub-sectors including beer, cider, wine, spirits, bottled water, soft drinks, fruit juice, hot drinks, dairy and non-dairy drinks. Company size and scale ranges from micro to large international companies.
Businesses from each of the drinks sub-sectors come together under the Drinks Cluster umbrella to form Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and work collaboratively across strategic projects.
Each SIG has an identity and marketing strategy tailored to each sector’s positioning and needs.
The four SIGS are:
- Beer and cider
- Wine and spirits
- Water and soft drinks
- Hot drinks, dairy, non-dairy and emerging innovations, new entrants’ drinks.
The SIGs identify actions to address according to the strategic priorities of their respective sectors, but there are some cross-cutting actions for the Drinks Cluster, including:
- Enabling and increasing innovation to produce distinctive and quality drinks
- Supporting the scale-up of high potential drinks businesses
- Building Welsh brands at home and abroad
- Improving skills and knowledge across the industry to improve innovation and quality.
The Welsh Government, working with the food and drink sectors, have strategically put together a number of Cluster Groups – CEO Cluster, Drinks Cluster, Export Club, Fine Food Cluster, Honey Cluster, Nutri-Wales Cluster and the Seafood Cluster. These clusters were developed to maximise economic growth within Wales and also to respond to sectors that needed direct Welsh Government support. They bring together like-minded people, with the key objective of helping businesses achieve accelerated growth in sales, profit and employment. The clusters are ambitious and aim to deliver real step change as opposed to incremental growth.
