CARLSBERG, the Danish brewing giant, is set to buy Britvic in a £3.3bn takeover. It's a move that will add Robinsons, J2O, Tango, and R. White's (among others) to its current alcohol portfolio.

The beer manufacturer hopes that the deal will create significant savings. But beyond any cost efficiencies associated with the purchase, are the brands it is buying well thought of by British consumers, or merely a lot of froth and bubbles?

Using YouGov BrandIndex data to look at a few of these brands shows that they are at least more liked than disliked. Customer Satisfaction scores for Robinsons (38.4), J2O (23.2), R.

White's (15.3) and Tango (13.5) show that each outperforms the average score for soft drink brands (11.7).

Across other measures, consumers are also broadly positive. Net Impression scores (which track overall sentiment)

for Robinsons are at 37.1- perhaps partially due to its long-running (now-concluded) partnership with Wimbledon - while J2O (25.0) and R. White's (14.8) also beat the average (11.7).

With a score of 12.8, Tango slightly underperforms this average, but scores remain positive.

In fact, the orange fizzy drink is the only one of these brands below the sector average in terms of Quality. Its score of 4.7 is less than half that of the industry score of 11.9. But Robinsons (35.2), J2O (21.3) and R. White's (14.1) all perform favourably compared to scores for UK soft drink brands in general. And while Tango (0.1) and J2O (-2.7) are considered worse value for money than the average (2.0), R. White's (3.6) and particularly Robinsons (21.3) are considered to give good bang for consumers' bucks.

What's more, outside of R. White's (2.9), Current Customer scores indicate that the public are more likely to have recently bought Robinsons (13.8), J2O (6.2), or Tango (5.8) than the average soft drink.

So alongside Britvic's operational capabilities, Carlsberg is, by and large, acquiring a set of liquid assets with clear strengths - even if there's still room to improve perceptions of Tango's quality or J2O's value. What remains to be seen: Will the combined Carlsberg Britvic be more successful as a "one-stop-shop" than it has been as two discrete alcohol and soft drink manufacturers?

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper