The biggest producer and supplier of maple syrup in the UK, Newport-based Clarks UK Ltd, is in the middle of a bumper few weeks in the run up to Pancake Day, following another record year for the company.
The incredible demand for maple syrup – which will see sales of the lesser-known superfood triple before Shrove Tuesday – is an example of the extraordinary response for Clarks, as according to the latest Kantar data, now owns 68 per cent of the market share with plans to double the business over the next two years.
With an already considerable presence in all the big four supermarkets – 2,000 Tesco branches, and 500-plus Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons stores – the next month will see Clarks’ products take centre stage and feature even more prominently in store further fuelling the maple syrup fever. Discount retailer Lidl and online supermarket Ocado also now sell Clarks’ syrup.
More than 36,000 bottles of pure and blended Clarks Maple Syrup are produced and packaged each day at the company’s factory on the Queensway Meadow Industrial Estate in Newport, ensuring the country has plentiful syrup supplies. This figure rocketed to 45,000 on both January 28 and 29 – a record for Clarks.
From small beginnings when managing director, Bob Clark, founded the company in 2008, the burgeoning business now manufactures 80 products for both the consumer and industrial markets including honey, ice-cream sauce, agave syrup, carob syrup, coffee syrups, brown sugar syrup and Demerara syrup.
Bob Clark said of this cumulative business success: “The maple syrup market continues to perform well and is currently worth around £15m in the UK. The Clarks maple brand remains far and away the leading authority and just in the last two years has grown by 65 per cent.
“We now have a team of 27 people at Clarks – up from 15 at the start of 2013, and have increased our product range vastly innovating with new flavours and developing new products. Our new large bottles have been a great success and helped us meet the family demand for our products.”
Pancake Day falls on Tuesday February 17 this year and it is predicted that more than 300,000 bottles of Clarks Maple Syrup will be sold on that day alone.
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