Irish cream liqueur brand Five Farms, which is stepping up its presence in the UK, is aiming to triple its sales in the next five years
Five Farms director Johnny Harte expects the brand to sell 700,000 bottles globally this year, creating €20m ($22m) in revenue. Harte said the plan is to reach shipments of two million bottles in the next five years, with a sales target of €60m.
Created by the US producer Holladay Distillery, Five Farms' most recent listing in the UK is through Sainsbury’s, the country's second-largest grocer. The cream liqueur will be available in around 200 Sainsbury’s stores from next month. To facilitate that deal, Five Farms, which was already on sale in the UK through Amazon, Master of Malt and The Whisky Exchange, has partnered with Sazerac.
“We've grown a lot faster than we thought, which is fantastic. The growth plan is keep going where we are, build on where we are and expand in the main cream liqueur markets,” Harte said.
Five Farms was launched in 2017 and is also sold in the US, markets in the EU, Australia and New Zealand. The brand, distilled by Holladay and bottled in Ireland, has called out France and Italy as two EU member states where it is growing rapidly.
Harte views the UK and the US as two key markets for the brand, pointing out that California alone has a bigger economy than France.
"There isn't an Irish cream market in the world that we're not looking at or have a presence in at the moment. There's no big beyond the hills market. We are focused in on the markets that we feel best suit the brand as well, because not every market in the world will be attractive to us for different reasons," he added.
Speaking on the cream-liqueur category, Harte noted the variety of products in the market. “People like cream liqueurs. It's a category that you see around the world appearing from different countries, Bourbon creams, onyx creams, rum creams. It's a good category. There are variations and within that some are good, some are to my taste, some are not.”
However, Harte feels the category “in general” has had “very little innovation”. He noted some efforts, pointing to Baileys Glide, a ready-to-drink 4% abv brand was aimed at the alcopop market in the 2000s but was which was discontinued by Diageo in 2006.
In June, Hemisphere Brands invested £1m ($1.3m) in a production facility for its Scotch-whisky-based cream-liqueur brand Magnum. The company said the infrastructure investment gave it “total” control over its manufacturing and bottling.
