Private label leader McBride

PRIVATE LABEL LEADER

With 20 factories in 11 countries, McBride is a global leader in the manufacture of household and personal care products for the private label market. And it is a market that continues to grow.

Mc Bride is Europe’s leading provider of private label household and personal care products, with more than 5000 employees and a turnover of around £800 million – well over twice the size of its nearest competitor. Currently the company supplies more than 95 per cent of Europe’s top 50 retailers, including Auchan, Carrefour, Tesco, Metro, Rewe, Aldi, Wal-Mart and Sainsbury’s. It is the number one in private label household and personal care products in the UK, France, Italy and Poland.

Founded in Manchester in 1927 to supply chemical processing products to Lancashire’s cotton industry, McBride moved into washing-up liquid and fabric conditioners in the 1960s, following the growing demand for supermarket private labels. The growing company was acquired by BP in 1978 and was established in its present form in 1994, following BP’s decision to sell its Consumer Products Division. The late 1990s saw rapid expansion of the product range and geographic reach, with acquisitions in the UK, Holland, France and Poland. Recent developments have included the 2007 acquisition of Dasty, an Italian producer of private label household cleaning liquids, and of Henkel’s European private label household products business and, in the following year, the acquisition of the production assets of Darcy Industries at Warrington and the former Remploy household and personal care products facility at St Helens. Also in 2008, McBride commissioned a Greenfield manufacturing facility in Zhongshan, China, for the production of specialist air fresheners. In 2009, the company acquired the Limelite and Frish brands in the UK and bought the manufacturing assets of Budelpack Roosendaal in Holland.

McBride’s global expansion continued in 2010 with the acquisition of Fortlab in Malaysia and Newlane Cosmetics in Vietnam as well as of a skincare business in Brno, Czech Republic. The company currently operates five factories in the UK, 10 in western Europe, two in central Europe and one each in China, Vietnam and Malaysia. Its production technologies include powders, liquids, tablets, soluble sachets, triggers, aerosols, creams and lotions as well as specialist air fresheners.

Two categories

Despite this ambitious acquisition strategy and continuing strong organic growth, McBride remains completely focused on its two chosen product categories of household and personal care. In the household cleaning sector it manufactures laundry products, dishwashing products, household cleaners, toilet cleaners and air care products. Every year 220 million bottles of household cleaners alone are filled at the company’s Ieper (formerly Ypres) factory. Recent investments in end-of-line automation, PET bottle-blowing and filling capacity has made this Belgium factory one of the most efficient in the Group.

In the UK, McBride’s new bleach filling machine at its Middleton, plant can produce 100 million bottles per year and in Europe the company currently produces

more than 2.5bn dishwasher tablets. The company employs soluble film technology in five factories to produce laundry liquids, household cleaners, dishwasher tablets, laundry powders and super-absorbent sachets.

Trigger cleaners are one of McBride’s core growth categories, with output growing since 2007 to more than 4 per cent of the world’s capacity.

In the personal care sector McBride manufactures baby care, hair care and body care products, bath and shower products as well as products for men’s grooming, oral and skincare. Its production facilities include three personal care liquids factories – in the UK, Belgium and Poland – two personal care aerosol factories in the UK and France, a specialist skincare facility in the Czech Republic and personal care and skincare factories in Malaysia and Vietnam.

A growing market

Private label is a business that is growing across the world; recent data from Euromonitor shows that in 2009 private label household products were ranked No.5 globally, behind Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Reckitt Benkiser and Henkel. Indeed, while all of these four leading manufacturers lost global share in that year, private label increased its share of the global household products market from 6 to 6.4 per cent. In Personal Care private label is now ranked in 10th place globally, with a 2.4 per cent share of the market – a position which provides significant opportunities for future growth.

In these circumstances, McBride believes that its clear leadership in both household and personal care private label products gives it excellent prospects for continuing growth, particularly in eastern Europe, where private label penetration is still relatively low. The size of its global operations gives the company obvious advantages but it is also committed to continuing innovation so that its customers can deliver better value and performance products to consumers and grow their own brands. McBride also puts sustainability at the top of its product development agenda, constantly seeking to reduce the environmental impact of all its products.

Other operations

Although McBride’s core business is private label it also has a growing portfolio of its own brands within the household and personal care sectors. These brands are particularly important in emerging markets where private label is in its infancy, and they also provide an opportunity to develop and test new ideas, products and packaging which are subsequently often adopted by private label customers.

McBride also supplies contract manufacturing services to brand owners in household and personal care. Typically brand owners turn to the company when they have a short or medium-term capacity issue or where they need a second manufacturer to spread the risk. In other cases brand owners may be looking for long-term partnerships or they may be purely marketing organisations with no manufacturing capabilities of their own. Whatever the need, McBride’s expertise in production, formulation and logistics means that it can deliver whatever level of support is required, from purely manufacturing to the entire process, from concept to packaging and delivery.

McBride plans to continue to seek further acquisition opportunities to enhance both its earnings growth and its geographical scope. In particular it will invest further in growth regions and categories to further leverage its capabilities and to maintain and expand its support to major retailers across the world. n