Ribena ( ) is a brand of blackcurrant-based soft drink (both uncarbonated and carbonated), and fruit drink concentrate designed to be mixed with water. It is available in bottles, cans and multi-packs. Originally of English origin, it was produced by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) until 2013, when the brand was sold to Japanese beverage conglomerate Suntory.
The brand originally had a strong reputation as a healthy product for children, stemming from its distribution to children as a vitamin C supplement during World War II by the British government. Beecham, a company that has been part of GSK since 2000, bought the brand in 1955 and developed many soft drink versions. A series of scandals in the 2000s, concerning vitamin C levels, sugar levels, and the amounts of actual fruit in some of the brands, damaged its reputation as a healthy product. By 2013, the brand was widely regarded as a soft drink.
In 2013, annual worldwide sales were around £500 million. That year, GSK sold Ribena and another consumer line, Lucozade, to the Japanese multinational Suntory for £1.35 billion. In April 2018, in the United Kingdom, Ribena's longstanding recipe was changed by the addition of artificial sweeteners in response to the introduction of a sugary drinks tax by the UK government.
History
Development
Ribena was originally manufactured in England by the Bristol-based food and drink company HW Carter as a blackcurrant squash. Development research into pure fruit syrups for the manufacture of milkshakes had been done at the Long Ashton Agriculture and Horticulture Research Station in North Somerset using a pectinase enzyme process; Ribena was developed by biochemist Audrey Green and Vernon Charley, a scientist at the University of Bristol in 1933. The blackcurrant variety was found to contain high levels of vitamin C. The drink was named Ribena (from the botanical name of the blackcurrant, Ribes nigrum), by Mr S. M. Lennox of Bristol in 1938.
Second World War
During the Second World War, other fruits rich in vitamin C, like oranges, became very difficult to obtain in the United Kingdom, due to German submarine attacks on cargo ships. Blackcurrant cultivation was encouraged by the government, and the yield of the nation's crop increased significantly. From 1942, almost the entire British blackcurrant crop was made into blackcurrant syrup (or cordial), almost all of it manufactured by Carters, and it was bought by the government and distributed to the nation's children for free, without the Ribena brand name, giving rise to the lasting popularity of blackcurrant flavourings in Britain.
Post-war
Production moved to the new Royal Forest Factory at Coleford in the Forest of Dean in late 1947, where production takes place today.
Carters was bought out by the Beecham Group in 1955. In 1989, Beecham and SmithKline Beckman merged to form SmithKline Beecham, and in 2000, SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoWellcome merged to form GlaxoSmithKline (GSK).
Through the years GSK and its predecessors developed many soft drink versions of Ribena but it retained an image as a "healthy food" in the UK and other Commonwealth countries.
In 2001, a formulation of the diluted Ribena cordial, sold as Ribena Toothkind (and endorsed by the British Dental Association as being less damaging to teeth than other soft drinks), was judged by the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority to have been advertised in a misleading manner, and claims that the drink did not encourage tooth decay should be removed from the packaging. The opinion was upheld by a hearing in the High Court. In 2003, the Food Commission in the United Kingdom criticised the sugar levels in regular Ribena as contributing to childhood obesity.