Ribena is a British-origin brand of blackcurrant-based uncarbonated and carbonated soft drink and fruit drink concentrate. It was produced by GlaxoSmithKline until 2013, when the brand was sold to Suntory. The brand originally had a strong reputation as a healthy product for children, stemming from its distribution to children as a vitamin C supplement during World War II by the British government. Beecham, a company that has been part of GSK since 2000, bought the brand in 1955 and developed many soft drink versions. A series of scandals in the 2000s, concerning vitamin C levels, sugar levels, and the amounts of actual fruit in some of the brands, damaged its reputation as a healthy product. By 2013, the brand was widely regarded as a soft drink. In 2013, annual worldwide sales were around £500 million. That year, GSK sold Ribena and another consumer line, Lucozade, to the Japanese multinational Suntory for £1.35 billion. In April 2018, in the United Kingdom, Ribena's longstanding recipe was changed by the addition of artificial sweeteners in response to the introduction of a sugary drinks tax by the UK government.
During the Second World War, other fruits rich in vitamin C, like oranges, became almost impossible to obtain in the United Kingdom, due to German submarine attacks on cargo ships. Blackcurrant cultivation was encouraged by the government, and the yield of the nation's crop increased significantly. From 1942, almost the entire British blackcurrant crop was made into blackcurrant syrup, almost all of it manufactured by Carters, and it was bought by the government and distributed to the nation's children for free, without the Ribena brand name, giving rise to the lasting popularity of blackcurrant flavourings in Britain.
Post-war
Production moved to the new Royal Forest Factory at Coleford in the Forest of Dean in late 1947, where production takes place today. Carters was bought out by the Beecham Group in 1955. In 1989, Beecham and SmithKline Beckman merged to form SmithKline Beecham, and in 2000, SmithKline Beecham and GlaxoWellcome merged to form GlaxoSmithKline. Through the years GSK and its predecessors developed many soft drink versions of Ribena but it retained an image as a "healthy food" in the UK and other Commonwealth countries. In 2001, a formulation of the diluted Ribena cordial, sold as Ribena Toothkind, was judged by the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority to have been advertised in a misleading manner, and claims that the drink did not encourage tooth decay should be removed from the packaging. The opinion was upheld by a hearing in the High Court. In 2003, the Food Commission in the United Kingdom criticised the sugar levels in regular Ribena as contributing to childhood obesity. In 2004, two high school students in New Zealand conducted a science experiment to determine the vitamin C levels of their favourite fruit drinks. They discovered that the "Ready to Drink Ribena" product they tested had undetectable levels of vitamin C, counter to the brand's reputation and advertisements which said that "the blackcurrants in Ribena contain four times the vitamin C of oranges". They contacted GSK, which did not respond to them, and their story was picked up by the television consumer affairs show Fair Go, which broadcast the story nationwide in October 2004. Following further testing, in March 2007, the New Zealand Commerce Commission brought 15 charges in the Auckland District Court against GlaxoSmithKline under the Fair Trading Act. In March 2007, GSK pleaded guilty and was fined NZ$217,500 by Auckland District Court for misleading consumers, and were ordered to run a series of corrective advertisements and place a statement on its website. GSK maintained the issue only affects Australia and New Zealand, and Ribena products sold in other markets, such as the United Kingdom, contain the levels of vitamin C stated on the product label. In 2007, a study conducted by the Australian Consumers' Association for Choice magazine in January 2007 reported that blackcurrant juice only constituted 5% of the Ribena fruit drink product. By 2013, the brand had annual worldwide sales of about £500 million. In April 2013, GSK put Ribena, along with Lucozade, up for sale to focus on its pharmaceutical business. The eventual sale to Japanese company Suntory for £1.35 billion was announced in September 2013.
