Simon Mowbray Cash and carry giant Booker is rolling out its Lynx premium lager brand into bottles for the first time. The Dutch-sourced brew, already a £23m-a-year success story, has been a hit with both retailers and consumers in canned form and will now appear in a new 330ml bottle format. Booker said it expected the Premium Strong Continental Lager Beer to grow sales of the own-label brand even further. It said the bottled format, which will again have an ABV of 5%, would also offer attractive returns for retailers. A four-pack will retail at £2.49, with a case of 24 bottles costing retailers £9.99. It means a potential profit of more than 21%. Booker’s marketing director, Mark Collier, said latest figures showed the take-home beer market was up 5% year on year by volume with growth in independents running eight per cent above the sector as a whole.Lager currently boasts a three-quarter share of the take-home beer trade, he said. “This is a tremendous addition to the Lynx product range,” said Collier. “We see an excellent future in authentic premium lagers from the Continent and want to ensure that our customers benefit to the full. “Lynx is already the second bestselling lager after Stella in Booker with a 2.7% share of the independent market. Approximately 40 million pints were sold last year alone and this new addition to the brand will enable independents to deliver a quality own-label premium product at an extremely competitive price.” {{DRINKS }}

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