Diageo has sold Archers, the Peach Schnapps brand, to De Kuyper Royal Distillers, adding to its international liqueur portfolio.
John Kennedy, Diageo’s president, Europe, said: “We are committed to creating value for all our stakeholders through delivering consistent and efficient growth, including actively shaping our portfolio towards opportunities that will maximise growth over the long-term.
“We take a disciplined approach to capital allocation and this announcement continues our track-record of active portfolio management.”
Archers Peach Schnapps is a clear fruit schnapps that is sold internationally. After its launch in 1986 this British bar legend became one of the fastest growing drink brands in the UK market and founded a whole new category. Today, Archers is a very well-known brand in the UK for both consumption at home and in bars and restaurants. The famous peach liqueur is essential in many classic cocktails such as WooWoo and Sex on the Beach.
“We want to own the peach category. With Peachtree we do so in a number of important cocktail markets, but in UK the peach category is historically owned by Archers. We had the choice to keep competing with Archers or to try to acquire Archers and add the brand to our premium liqueur portfolio. We decided to do the latter,” explains Mark de Witte, CEO of De Kuyper.
“Archers is a high-quality liqueur with a great heritage, deeply rooted in UK consumers’ minds when it comes to peach liqueurs. This strong brand performs very stably and has remained relevant for consumers in the UK ever since its launch. For De Kuyper the brand will have high priority and we will contribute our over 325 years of expertise in liqueurs and our specific knowledge in the peach category to bring out the best in Archers.”
As part of this transaction, Diageo has agreed a 24-month manufacturing supply agreement with De Kuyper Royal Distillers.
“We see an interesting growth platform for Archers in the category of cocktails and will utilize the insights, experience and best practices we gained with Peachtree. Our focus stays on the current audience where the brand is popular and which is fitting very well with the cocktail-drinker target group,” explains Godelief van Erve, global marketing director at De Kuyper.
