Badet Clément has posted double-digit global growth driven by a particular impressive UK performance.
The company, which specialises in branded and estate wines from the Languedoc, Burgundy, the Rhone Valley and Provence, has reported a 12.5% jump in global turnover to €49.5 million, with UK turnover soaring 25% to €2.8 million in 2017.
Badet Clément partly attributed the “exceptional UK growth” to its flagship brand, Les Jamelles, as well as a raft of new releases, both branded and estate wines, which it said had all performed strongly in the financial results released today.
The UK market’s “outstanding performance” was even more impressive as 2017 was "far from an easy year" for the UK wine industry, it said.
The double-digit increase for the Badet Clément group as a whole came from right across the group’s various activities, it added.
The branded wines portfolio continued to perform extremely well, up by 16.6%, due to both organic growth and distribution gains, according to the results.
Badet Clément was “extremely pleased” with its performance in 2017”, said president and founder Laurent Delaunay.
“This strong growth and consolidation of our fundamental activities in 2017 enables us to look ahead to the future and continued success, with confidence and optimism,” he said.
In terms of markets, the increase was attributable as much to established markets such as France and the UK, as it was to expanding markets, led by the US, China and Australia, he added.
The Abbotts & Delaunay Collection, a range of high-end wines from the Languedoc-Roussillon region, took off considerably during the last year, said Delaunay, materialising the investments in quality and marketing that had been made in the brand over the past few years.
The branded wine activity also benefited from an exclusive distribution agreement for Europe, which Badet Clément signed last year with Fourth Wave Wines.
The estate wines continued to show steady growth, with an increase in turnover of 5.2%, which given the context of the increasing scarcity of resources the company has to face in Burgundy is remarkable.
The diversification of DVP (Domaines & Vins de Propriété) - which represents this activity within the group - into the vineyards of Southern France had also proved “very successful”.
Keeping the momentum going, the group has recorded a 22% increase in sales for the first half of this year.