Dublin, Sept 11 - British soft drinks maker Britvic expects the pressure from the rising cost of energy and raw materials to increase into next year, Chief Executive Paul Moody said on Thursday.
Moody said that Britvic's raw material cost increase would rise to 6 percent in the next financial year from a rise of 4.5 percent over the current year.
"If you take raw materials, plus energy, plus fuel, there is an extraordinary inflationary pressure in the entire beverage market," Moody told reporters in Dublin.
Britvic, Britain's No.2 soft drinks maker after Coca-Cola Enterprise, would try to pass on rising costs to customers and cut down on packaging such as plastic bottles whose price is linked to that of oil.
In a trading update on Tuesday, Britvic had said it remained confident that its full-year earnings would be in line with market expectations, despite a consumer slowdown in the UK and Ireland.
It said trading in the UK and its international business had been better than expected in the second half but its performance in Ireland had been adversely affected by worsening economic conditions.
Britvic, whose brands include Robinsons squash, J2O, Fruit Shoot and Gatorade sports drinks, last year bought the soft drinks division of Irish drinks company C&C Group in a 170 million pound ($299.2 million) deal.
Earlier on Thursday, Fyffes Plc, the Irish distributor of tropical fruit, repeated its warning that its full-year results would be hit as it had been unable to fully pass on the higher costs of fruit and fuel to customers.