Clearly Drinks

Clearly Drinks, head quartered in Sunderland, is a soft drinks manufacturer with a specialism in the fast-growing flavoured spring water sector.
 

Heritage Site

Based around its very own fresh-water spring, Clearly Drinks has been operational on its site for more than 135 years with some of its most loyal employees now into their fifth decade of working for the business.

In relative terms though, private equity involvement in Clearly Drinks is only a recent thing, with NorthEdge Capital having acquired the business in 2017. NorthEdge spotted a business that had not only demonstrated its ability to deliver in a rapidly growing market but had room for much further growth – particularly in ESG-led areas.

Under NorthEdge’s ownership, Clearly Drinks has seen a multi-million-pound investment into a new canning facility at its headquarters in 2020. This both supported the businesses’ ambitious growth plans as well as its drive to reduce single-use plastics. In fact, by the end of 2020 the business had shrunk its usage of these by 211 tonnes through redesigning products and packaging to reduce the amount of plastic used, as well as focusing on making their branded bottles and packaging fully recyclable by 2022.

Another important area that Clearly Drinks has been able to scale up are its sugar free offerings. Its ‘Perfectly Clear’, ‘Revolution Waves’ and ‘Upstream’ brands are a fantastic example of this; natural strong fruit flavours mixed with spring water taken from their very own borehole – all with zero sugar. This is a huge area of the market – particularly as more health-conscious shoppers now look for healthier alternatives – that NorthEdge are supporting Clearly Drinks to become a leader of.

Clearly Drinks has also championed several initiatives to support their people and local community, including becoming a Disability Confident Employer, training mental health first aiders and encouraging diversity in manufacturing through education programmes with local schools.