Everyone, and welcome to the Fever-Tree Full Year 2023 Results Presentation. My name is Carla, and I'm going to be your coordinating your call today. During the presentation, you can register to ask a question by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. I will now hand you over to your host, Tim Warrillow, to begin. Tim, please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to hear about Fever-Tree's 2023 performance. My name is Tim Warrillow, Co-Founder and CEO of Fever-Tree, and I'm joined on the call by Andy Branchflower, CFO, Charles Gibb, our North American CEO, and Ann Hyams, our Director of Investor Relations. This morning, I would like to start by highlighting some of the key points that I hope you'll take away from the presentation, as well as updating you on our progress as part of our comprehensive ESG agenda. Following this, Andy will take you through the financial review before Charles and I present the regional strategic update. Over the page, slide three. The group delivered good revenue growth during 2023, especially in the U.S., which has grown to become our number one revenue-generating region for the group.
Our focus on quality and innovation ensures that the brand continues to grow in strength and reputation. This was clearly demonstrated by the fact that we are recently named the best-selling and top trending mixer for the tenth year running by the world's top bars and restaurants. We've also successfully driven share gains in each of our regions, extending our premium mixer category leadership globally. In addition, we started to broaden our total opportunity beyond our core mixes with products such as flavored sodas, starting to contribute meaningfully to our growth around the world. And more recently, our move into adjacent product categories, such as our cocktail mixers and soft drinks, have shown early success and are ensuring that we expand our portfolio to an ever greater number of drinking occasions.
As we've been executing against the global opportunity, the group has experienced significant macro cost headwinds over the last few years, resulting in significant gross margin pressure on the business. However, we started to turn an important corner in 2023, doubling EBITDA in the second half of the year by mitigating inflationary cost pressures alongside driving operational efficiencies. In addition, we've now secured a new glass contract for 2024 with fully hedged energy pricing, which, alongside lower transatlantic freight rates and our measured, consistent approach to pricing, means we're confident of doubling EBITDA in 2024. So over the page. The next few slides demonstrate the strength of the brand today, how we're diversifying our portfolio to drive growth, as well as reminding you of the significant global opportunity.
As you can see from the left-hand side of this slide, we have grown share in our core mixing categories over the last four years in all our key markets. With the exception of tonic in the U.K., where we have maintained an incredibly strong market share position. Our share growth in the U.S. has been particularly noticeable, and Charles will go into more detail later this morning about how we have gained the number one share in both the tonic and ginger beer categories in this market. The right-hand side of the slide highlights how the brand is growing in terms of awareness, household penetration, and distribution gains across all our markets. From our mature U.K. market, where we continue to grow our penetration despite our maturity, to our high-growth market, like Australia, where we're growing awareness and distribution at pace. Over the page.
Innovation has always been at the heart of the Fever-Tree proposition. From initially revitalizing the tonic category in the U.K., to broadening the brand in more premium mixing occasions, and more recently, entering new adjacent categories. We now have a strong range of tonics, gingers, and sodas, which all contribute meaningfully to our growth and give us the ability to flex our portfolio to cater to differences in consumption habits by market. Consequently, we now have a much more balanced global sales mix than we did four years ago, with around 40% of our sales now coming from products outside of tonic, up from just 24% in 2019.
We expect the portfolio to continue to diversify as we grow across different markets, innovate to cater to trending drinking occasions, as well as entering significant new categories, all of which mean we are confident about driving growth long into the future. Slide six. We continue to sit at the confluence of a number of strong long-term global trends, from the continued premiumization of spirits and their growth ahead of wine and beer, to consumer preferences for craft and quality ingredients and easy-to-make cocktails, to the trade's desire to drive premium experiences and margins. This is why we're confident that we'll continue to premiumize and expand the mixed category in our next wave of white space markets, using the same blueprint that has driven our success in our stronghold markets.
Furthermore, we also see growing opportunities across many of our markets beyond our core carbonated mixes, and we'll continue to develop products to cater to trending categories such as cocktail mixes and adult soft drinks, leveraging the power of the brand. Over the page, slide seven. Before I hand over to Andy for the financial review, I'd like to update you on our progress on the three of our five branches as part of our ESG agenda. As you can see from the slide, we're driving action across the ESG spectrum, both directly within our business and through our global supply chain, with a particular focus on reducing our carbon footprint, increasing our recycled content, and the area that I'm most passionate about, our work with malaria.
Here, we are helping to fight one of the world's oldest and deadliest diseases, a campaign that we have committed to for the last 10 years. Alongside our work with malaria, we continue to work with charities closer to our home markets, such as Future Frontiers and Earthwatch in the U.K., and One Tree Planted in the U.S. Finally, we make sure we're supporting the most important part of the business, our people. Over the last year, we have made great progress on our diversity, equality, and inclusion agenda, where our committee has developed a three-year strategy to drive progress in this important area. I'll now hand over to Andy to take you through the financial review.
Thank you, Tim, and good morning, everyone. On this summary slide, we set out the key financial metrics. I'll talk to the detail this morning, including particular focus on the building blocks that will drive margin recovery in 2024 and provide a platform to deliver strong, profitable growth going forward. So turning the page. Before we take a closer look at gross margin, I'll touch briefly on overheads, which increased marginally to 23.7% of revenue, reflecting continued investment behind the brand and increased staff costs as we built a local team in Australia. At interims, I spoke about confidence in driving an improvement in profitability in the second half, and we delivered this, with absolute EBITDA doubling in H2 compared to H1. Alongside this at interims, we recognized an exceptional item in relation to a one-off U.S. production issue.
At full year, this expense has subsequently been offset by a receivable in respect to the claim, which is in progress. Turning the page, working capital increased ahead of expectations to 28.5% of revenue. This was driven by the phasing of receivables, reflecting stronger November, December trading year-on-year. And whilst elevated working capital impacted year-end cash, it has quickly unwound post-year-end, with cash improving to GBP 74 million at the end of last month. Looking forward, revenue growth, combined with margin recovery and working capital normalization, will drive improved cash flow conversion in 2024. And as a reflection of our confidence in the business, we're recommending a full-year dividend, which is up 2% year-on-year. The main drivers of 2023 gross margin were in line with what we guided to this time last year.
We drove margin improvement through net price increases across regions and through increased U.S. local production, alongside softening transatlantic freight rates on products delivered from the U.K. to the U.S. However, as expected, these improvements were offset by significant inflationary cost headwinds, most notably in glass. While these were partially mitigated by efficiency, optimization, and procurement initiatives, the net 740 basis point headwind drove an overall reduction in gross margin across the year. Importantly, though, we saw a change in the margin trajectory as we progressed through 2023. The 30.7% gross margin we reported in the first half represented an inflection point in the headwinds we've experienced over the last few years of macro volatility.
As can be seen here, we delivered an almost 300 basis points improvement in the second half, and we expect this trajectory to continue this year. And that gross margin improvement will drive a significant uplift in EBITDA, with consensus expectations pointing to a doubling in EBITDA from 2023 to 2024. So turning the page, we set out the drivers of gross margin improvement in 2024. Firstly, glass pricing. During 2023, we completed a tender process for our U.K. and European glass and contracted with a new primary partner. This long-term strategic partnership will underpin greater security of supply, the ability to work together on carbon reduction initiatives, and importantly, full transparency and involvement with regards to energy hedging, with 2024 glass energy costs hedged at significantly improved rates year- on- year.
And so following the impact in recent years of extraordinary levels of glass costs inflation, we're confident of driving a significant year-on-year reduction in glass cost in 2024. Secondly, U.S. transatlantic freight rates have normalized back towards historic levels, and we've locked in pricing with our primary freight partner for 2024. This normalization gives us optionality this year with regards to fulfillment of U.S. demand from the U.K. or the U.S., while still driving margin recovery. And finally, we'll continue to realize net price increases across our regions this year, whilst offsetting wider inflationary cost impacts through our efficiency, optimization, and procurement initiatives. And we will continue to drive margin recovery over the medium term and remain comfortable with an expectation of circa 200 basis points of gross margin recovery each year as we look out beyond 2024. Breaking this down into three areas.
Firstly, as the more significant inflationary headwinds that we've been specifically impacted by as a business continue to recalibrate, the full benefit of these movements will flow through to our P&L in 2025, as balance sheet positions and supplier hedging contracts unwind. Secondly, the recalibration of transatlantic freight rates now affords us the flexibility to produce across our U.K. and U.S. production network to the similar margin. Going forward, we will build out and scale our local production network in the U.S. at the right pace, with the right partners and at the right pricing. And as we do this, local U.S. production costs will improve, and this will drive margin recovery over the medium term. Finally, across 2021 to 2023, when we were exposed to significant transitory inflationary headwinds, we chose not to take knee-jerk pricing actions.
Instead, as we stated consistently through this period, our strategy is to work in partnership with our customers and take regular, steady price increases. This course of action was the correct one. As Tim and Charles will describe, the brand is in a very healthy state, building market share across our regions at the expense of the competition and retaining its premium price point without recourse to increased promotional intensity. And this puts us in a strong position to continue to improve net price steadily going forward, whilst working hard to offset some of the more established inflationary cost increases we've seen over recent years. There's no question that the challenges we faced against such a volatile macroeconomic and geopolitical backdrop forced us to accelerate our focus on driving continual improvement across our operations.
We've learned important lessons, but as we stand here today, our global supply chain capability, procurement processes, and operating business models have improved significantly over this challenging period. And as we look forward, a stronger, more resilient supply chain will help us to mitigate the challenges of ongoing volatility to deliver further margin recovery, and most importantly of all, allow us to continue to capitalize on the global potential of the brand in years to come. Finally, though, with regards to the outlook for 2024, we're comfortable with consensus revenue expectations of circa 10% growth for the Fever-Tree brand, and taking into account a reduction in GDP portfolio brand revenue, this will deliver circa 8% revenue growth for the group.
I've talked to our confidence in delivering circa 600 basis points of gross margin improvement this year, and we remain comfortable with consensus EBITDA margin expectations, so 15% for 2024. With that, I'll pass back to Tim.
Well, thanks, Andy. Charles and I will now take you through some of our regional specific highlights as we continue to make great strides across the world, starting with the U.S., in recognition that this is now the group's largest market. So over to Charles.
Many thanks, Tim. Good morning. Fever-Tree delivered GBP 117 million of revenue in 2023, a strong increase of 24% on a constant U.S. dollar currency basis, as we continue to gain market share and popularity among U.S. consumers. We're making great progress against a substantial opportunity in this market, where the premium spirit category is 12x the size of the U.K. We're driving growth on multiple fronts, significantly outperforming our competitors and extending our market-leading value position in both ginger beer and tonic water as the brand goes from strength to strength. Moving on to slide 19. Our diverse drink strategy remains the cornerstone of our innovation pipeline and ensures our portfolio caters to multiple mixing categories and drinking occasions in the U.S., focused on U.S. consumer spirits.
We've seen particularly strong growth in our sparkling mixes through our new flavors, including pink grapefruit, lime and yuzu, and Sicilian lemonade, all of which tap into trends towards longer, lighter serves, particularly with tequila and vodka. This combination of our deep knowledge of the U.S. consumer, alongside our strong execution, has delivered a plus 67% CAGR growth in our sparkling range over the last four years, with further innovation identified to drive growth into the future. In addition, we've entered the cocktail mixer category with our classic and light margaritas and Bloody Mary, all of which are performing well. This category is larger than either tonic water or ginger beer, and that's a significant longer-term opportunity, with the ability to attract new and existing Fever-Tree consumers, as well as leverage our strong network to drive distribution gains and sales growth. Moving on to slide 20.
We've done a great job of expanding our distribution reach across both channels over the last few years, but are still only partway through the journey in terms of both the number of accounts and our presence within each account, as detailed on this slide. In the on-trade, we've more than doubled our presence in hotels, bars, and restaurants since 2019, led by our progress in our national account business. We still see a strong opportunity in the on-trade, with the potential to significantly increase the number of venues where Fever-Tree can be present. Equally, we're working closely with our bartender network to increase the number of drinks per account by educating them about the diversity of our portfolio, creating more cocktail menus than ever before to bring this to life.
As a result, we've grown the number of accounts where we have, where we have four or more points of distribution, from 11% in 2019 to 17% in 2023, with a future ambition of ensuring that about a third of our accounts have four or more drink offerings. In the off-trade, we now have a very strong presence in national grocery and have strengthened our position as the clear category leader and advisor to some of the largest retailers across the country. We've also made huge strides in terms of the number of points of distribution per account.
As we continue to innovate and introduce new flavors and formats, such as our 150 ml cans, we will continue to increase our presence within each off-trade account, with the aim of achieving almost 50% of our accounts, with 14 or more points of distribution at grocery. This, combined with our ability to effectively promote alongside our spirits partners, has driven significant growth in 2023. Alongside this, we've also transformed our online business, in particular through Amazon, which nearly doubled in 2023, a further positive reflection of the brand's increasing popularity. Finally, moving on to slide 21, and finally, I wanted to illustrate how the strength of the brand, our team, and our ability to innovate is building a considerable competitive advantage, enabling us to drive growth well ahead of the category.
We remain focused on building brand awareness through targeted campaigns, growing our media, growing our household penetration from 2%-5% since 2019, through a combination of brand activations, targeted online media and advertising, co-promotions with a wide variety of spirits brands across tequila, bourbon, vodka, mezcal, and gin, as well as non-alc spirits. This, along with our innovation expertise, is why we are now the go-to mixer brand in the U.S. for retailers and spirit companies alike. Fever-Tree's growing popularity across a breadth of mixer categories has enabled us to grow our presence, and having won a significant number of accounts in all channels over the last few years, we are incredibly focused on driving deeper depth per account over the medium term.
Finally, the combination of our product quality, innovation, distribution gains, and optimal price point has has driven superior sales velocity compared to our competitors. This, in turn, means that we deliver higher sales and better cash margins for our customers, incentivizing them to prioritize the brand for, for promotions, display, menus and visibility, and thus facilitate further growth. The U.S. remains the biggest medium opportunity for, for the group, and as I hope you can see from the last few slides, while we've made fantastic progress over the last few years, there is still a significant runway ahead. I'll hand back to Tim to talk about the U.K., Europe, and rest of world.
Thanks, Charles. So turning to slide 22, and turning to the U.K., where we have delivered GBP 114.8 million worth of revenue. This is marginally down year-on-year, following a summer trading period that was impacted by adverse weather, but we've finished the year well and are confident of returning to growth in 2024. Fever-Tree continues to extend its lead as the mixer brand of choice in the U.K., with 45% value share of the total mixer market across both the on-trade and off-trade. Over 50% higher than the next largest competitor, Schweppes. In the off-trade, we command a higher rate of sell than any other mixer brand, and around 7 x higher than the average premium brand, making us the clear choice for retailers up and down the country.
In the on-trade, we continue to increase our value share with over half the mixer market by value and have grown to over 10 x the size of the next largest premium mixer. Slide 23. Fever-Tree has built an unrivaled portfolio to cater a broad range of mixing occasions across a growing number of spirit categories. In 2023, our non-tonic products grew by 20% and accounted for 25% of our portfolio, up from just over 10% in 2019. Two products that have done particularly well in recent years are our ginger ale and flavored sodas, which have gained significant distribution and are driving growth of their respective categories, supported by the growth of rum and vodka that pair perfectly with these products. Slide 24.
Our innovation has always been centered around the latest drinking trends, and recently this has taken our efforts beyond our core carbonated mixes to explore two adjacent categories, cocktail mixers and adult soft drinks, which we believe both have significant potential. We launched our cocktail mixer range during the first half of 2023 and have already secured over 4,000 distribution points across major U.K. supermarkets, as well as good interest from our on-trade customers, winning distribution in a number of the largest U.K. on-trade chains. By revolutionizing the simplicity of making popular cocktails, we're attracting new consumers to the Fever-Tree brand, as well as enabling the on-trade to offer high-quality margaritas, mojitos, and martinis, serves that were previously limited to high-end bars.
Our adult soft drink range has been gaining traction over the last 18 months as we have utilized the strength of the brand and well-known quality credentials to enter this sizable category. Having introduced our first specific soft drink format, a four by 250 ml can pack, to the off-trade in 2023, our adult soft drinks have gained over 9,000 distribution points at U.K. retail and grew by over 30% during the year, contributing meaningfully to our retail sales mix. And beyond the off-trade, in the on-trade, we've launched a 275 ml bottle to cater for the soft drink occasion, with our lemonades proving particularly popular. And as such, we are now exploring the opportunity for on-the-go occasions, including train stations and convenience. Slide 25.
I wanted to give you a small insight into the fantastic work our team has done across multiple channels to showcase the brand's credentials and ensure we remain front of mind for customers when they're making purchasing decisions, with a focus particularly on co-promotions and digital platforms. At retail, we secured our first fully branded bay in Waitrose, which enabled us to co-promote with a number of different spirit brands to showcase our full range of tonics through a variety of pairing suggestions. Beyond tonics, we did our first co-promotion with our adult soft drinks and a snack item through Ocado's online platform. The success of these dedicated co-promotional retail spaces is an area that is gaining interest from other retailers and is likely to result in additional off-shelf space going forward.
We've also successfully, and very cost effectively, used the rather overlooked medium of radio to showcase the breadth of our portfolio, alongside other digital platforms, to increase the awareness of our new cocktail mixer range, with a focus on how to serve and to demonstrate their simplicity. Furthermore, we haven't lost our old campaigning roots, as demonstrated by our print campaign, highlighting the dangers of artificial sweeteners. As I hope you have seen from these last few slides, we continue to make good progress in the U.K., extending our market-leading position and diversifying our portfolio with a focus on the most popular drinking trends. So slide 26. Turning to Europe, the Fever-Tree brand delivered GBP 94.6 million worth of revenue, an increase of 6% year-on-year and 4% in constant currency.
While we continue to extend our premium mixer leadership position across Europe, our revenue growth is impacted by subdued consumer sentiment in several markets, most notably in Germany. This meant our total European revenue, including GDP portfolio brands in German market, increased by 4% to GBP 105.4 million. During the year, we significantly outgrew our distribution partner in two key markets, France and Greece, where we've transitioned to larger beverage outfits with strong national account coverage to support our growth ambitions. These changes have already resulted in very positive momentum in these two important future markets. Over the page. The brand continues to grow well across Europe, and Fever-Tree now holds just over 15% value share of the total off-trade mixer category, increasing our share by over a quarter since 2019.
In the premium segment, we're extending our dominance with 68% value share at the end of 2023. Specifically, we are driving growth in our two categories of tonic and ginger beer, delivering growth well ahead of the total market and other premium brands. We've seen particularly good progress in ginger beer over the last two years and now hold 37% value share of the total category, having contributed to almost 80% of the category's value growth since 2021. Over the page. Our success in our European markets has been underpinned by our investment in marketing across various channels and categories to build awareness of our increasingly diverse product range. During 2023, we focused on far-reaching above-the-line campaigns, such as billboards in Paris, along with TV ads in several markets, all of which showcase our ingredient quality.
We also use launch events for our most recent innovations, such as Sparkling Pink Grapefruit, to engage with trade press, influencers, and top bars and restaurants, with the aim of encouraging trial and juicing serves like the Paloma. Following specific campaigns across Italy, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, we saw a marked increase in Fever-Tree's brand awareness, especially in Switzerland, where our TV ad alone led to a 13% increase. Our targeted marketing investment, focused on innovation and high-quality premium ingredients, are really resonating with the European consumer, and we continue to look ahead with confidence at the future potential of this region. Slide 29. Our final region is the rest of the world, where Fever-Tree delivered GBP 27.2 million worth of revenue, which, despite a positive second half performance, meant we finished the year with a revenue decline of 10% at constant currency.
As we mentioned in our interim results, the transition to a new subsidiary set up in Australia, which included a one-off inventory buyback in the first half of the year, impacted revenue delivery for the region. However, our revenue across the rest of the world region, excluding Australia, was in good growth. Our underlying trading across our key markets in the rest of the world region was positive, with good progress made in Canada, where it became the number one ginger beer brand by value and remained the dominant premium mixer brand in the market.
We also continue to make good progress in Japan with our partner, Asahi, where we believe there's a very significant future opportunity. Momentum, we are driving the premium mix market across the world, alongside the significant steps we've taken this year to set the brand up for future growth in the Australian market, makes us confident of a much stronger 2024 across this region. And we are more optimistic than ever about the future prospects of the Fever-Tree brand globally. So Slide 30. I'd like to finish by once again reminding you of the strategic progress we've made during 2023, and why we remain confident in the outlook for the business. There's no doubt that significant global opportunity remains. The spirit category is large, growing and gaining share from beer and wine globally, and consumers are increasingly looking for high-quality ingredients as they aim to drink less, but better.
The Fever-Tree brand continues to grow in popularity and gain share well ahead of the competition around the world, with especially strong growth in the biggest global premium spirit market of the U.S. In addition, our unrivaled brand credentials are enabling us to broaden our addressable market as we expand into new categories beyond our core mixes. So along with top line growth, the business is very focused on driving margin improvements and turned an important corner in the second half of the year as we doubled EBITDA, following significant progress in driving operational efficiencies, as well as offsetting some of the inflationary cost pressures we've been exposed to over the last two years.
Our new glass contract, lower freight rates, and consistent approach to price increases, along with further operational efficiencies we can implement, means we are confident that driving material margin improvement over the medium term, including a double of EBITDA in 2024. Thank you for listening this morning. Andy and I, along with Charles in the U.S., are now happy to answer your questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your device is unmuted locally. Our first question comes from Rashad Kawan from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.
Hey, good morning. Good morning, Tim, Andy, Charles, and Ann. Thanks for taking my questions, and congrats on, on the results. A couple from me, please. First on the U.S., clearly a compelling growth story. I loved, page 20 and how clear it is in, in framing where you are today and the opportunity at hand. Can you talk about what you see as kind of the risks to the upside and downside when it comes to getting to those medium-term goals over time? That's the first question. And then on the second one, if I can drill into the U.K., consensus is modeling about 1% growth going forward. It's clear that the growth from the non-tonic business is impressive, but that implies, you know, the core tonics business was down high single digits, I think, last year.
How should we think about the overall trajectory of the U.K. business in the medium term? Do you think that the growth in the non-tonic business can be enough to offset the decline in tonics over time? And how important is innovation in all of this? Thank you very much.
Hi.
Okay. Thank you. Charles, do you want to, do you want to tackle the first one about the U.S.?
Yeah, very happy. Look, I think the opportunity for us and sort of within that, I think you're asking really about sort of the risks going forward. You know, for me, the biggest things are as follows. Firstly, we need to continue to innovate. You know, innovation is key. We are tackling more and more drinking occasions today. We believe strongly that there are still a number of drinking occasions for us to go after, and even within those drinking occasions, the way that the U.S. consumer operates and the way the U.S. trade operates is, they're always looking for the next twist or the next evolution of that. I think probably the best example to give you from recent years has been the launch of our Blood Orange Ginger Beer.
You know, we took a ginger beer, which we developed specifically with Maker's Mark, and then targeted that against a bourbon opportunity. Now, the mule is considered classically a vodka drink, but here we are actually extending it and working with a spirits partner to keep innovating and extending that mule drink. So that a mule today is now not only a vodka drink, but also a tequila drink, a bourbon drink, an Irish mule whiskey drink. We just had St. Patrick's Day, so there's an awful lot of those flowing around the place. So I think one is our ability to innovate and continue to innovate and be relevant in our innovation with the U.S. consumer. I think that's absolutely critical for us.
Secondly is really the ability to leverage the brand's strength and the acceptance and the, if you like, the quality of our brand ingredients, our brand story, to ensure that we actually can tackle sort of multiple consumer needs and occasions, and particularly evolve the brand into sort of more and more soft consumption. We do see, and we know already that our ginger beer, our sparkling lemonade, our grapefruit, et cetera, are all consumed neat, as well as, as well as obviously as the mixer. And whilst we'll always be a mixer at our core, there are huge opportunities for us if we can extend into that, into that incremental space.
Obviously, most notably with ginger ale, where we know that the quality of the ingredients, we know that our ginger ale is significantly better tasting than anything else on the market. Significantly, I would say, better for you in the fact that we're not using high-fructose corn syrup. We've got a delicious, real ginger taste in there. So expanding and extending that. And I think finally then, it's about then, you know, our ability to, you know, our continued ability to execute and invest behind the opportunity, which we, which we continue to do. You know, whether that's in just distribution networks, people, and most importantly, now, I think media and marketing is going to play a larger and larger role for us in the future.
Over to you, Tim.
Great. Thanks, Charles. And your question on the U.K. Look, I mean, our tonic did decline a bit, only low to medium single digit last year. And that is just in reflection, as you know, about the stabilizing of this gin category, and our tonic is obviously reflecting that. And in truth, if it wasn't for the kind of soggy summer, I think we would have been pretty optimistic that our tonic business would have, you know, been stable itself or actually in a moderate growth. But I think the really important point is that, you know, gin is stabilizing, and it's a big, significant category in the U.K. It accounts for about a quarter of the whole spirit category, and is a very premium one with a very loyal customer base.
And so we're very optimistic that that will continue to be a very important part of our portfolio mix going forward. But excitingly for us, as we talk about, is the growth of the range of our products. I mean, we saw, you know, 25% growth for our other non-tonic products in the U.K. And as we talk about, and I talked about in the presentation, our move into these other cocktail areas with our cocktail mixers, which early days, but was really well received. Very positive early signs. We're gonna be putting a lot of focus, both in terms of marketing and distribution, behind those in the summer and beyond. And then, of course, as we talk about the opportunity in the world of adult soft drinks in the U.K.
The point is, we remain very confident of the opportunity going forward here in the U.K. I hope that came across in the presentation.
Yep, very clear. Thank you very much.
Next, next. Is there another?
Our next question comes from Matthew Ford, from BNP Paribas Exane.
Well, thanks for the thanks for the question. Two questions from me, please. So the first one's on the margin. You've clearly kind of gone through the margin outlook and the expansion you're expecting for 2024. But could you just comment a little bit, maybe on 2025, if we're not too early? You know, what your kind of, you know, high-level expectation is of the shape of 2025. You know, how many of these tailwinds we're seeing next year in 2024 rather, are gonna come through and benefit 2025 as well? Just any thoughts you have around that? That's the first question. And then the second one is just on the U.S.
You mentioned you've terminated the contract with your West Coast bottling supplier and moved to the East Coast. Just wanted to get an update on, you know, what's your current level of U.S. domestic production now, and how do you see the kind of balance between local production in the U.S. versus shipping across from Europe, you know, this year and going forward now that freight rates have come down? Thank you.
Andy, do you want to take those two?
Yeah. Morning, Matthew. I think in terms of the first question, obviously on slide 15, kind of laid out the three areas that we think about driving sort of medium-term margin recovery. And as I said, I think we're comfortable with an expectation currently, if you look at consensus for 2025, of about 200 basis points of gross margin improvement. And when we think about the sort of three areas I spoke about, about the fact that some of those inflationary headwinds, like transatlantic freight, like energy costs into glass, we do expect to see a further benefit in 2025, just as we annualize the full unwind of balance sheet positions, and we're laying down hedges currently for 2025 with our glass supplier at improved rates relative to our 2024 hedge rate.
So I think that gives us confidence in the visibility of further margin improvement next year. The other sort of bucket I spoke about is the fact that we intend to remain consistent with our pricing policy, take those steady, regular price increases while we're, you know, have this broad suite of programs that are really focused on offsetting inflationary cost impacts through optimizing production footprint, procurement efficiency, technical optimizations, and really leveraging the work we've done over the last couple of years to upweight our sort of end-to-end operational processes and embed technology across those as well. So we feel very positive about the ability to drive further margin improvement. But we think a sort of steady gradual recovery in that gross margin is a sensible place way to think about it.
The third bucket, talks to kind of, our U.S. production footprint, which really comes onto your second question. And, we said in the release today, we chose not to renew our West Coast, U.S. bottling contract. That decision was purely down to price. The pricing being offered for the contract renewal wasn't in line with our requirements. And I think one of the advantages of having a global production footprint is that we can leverage that. We can leverage, in that instance, the fantastic economies of scale we are able to capture here in the U.K. We're also able to leverage the fact that those transatlantic freight rates have come back in line with more historic levels, which means it's more economical in the near term to fulfill West Coast demand from the U.K.
For that reason, when we stand back and look at our overall production mix, U.K. to U.S., it's skewed back towards the U.K. for 2024. But look, in the longer term, we remain committed to our strategy of increasing our local U.S. production footprint. And I think the fact that we signed an additional East Coast U.S. bottler last year, which we'll be bringing online this year, is testament to that. They're, we see them as a good long-term strategic partner in terms of their positioning. They're closer to the source of our U.S. glass. They're also positioned so that we can fulfill demand into Canada in due course as well.
So we remain committed in the long term to building that U.S. footprint, but in the near term, we're also trying to balance that with that margin recovery, and it's an important component of the 600 basis points we intend to deliver in 2024.
Great. Thanks, Andy.
Thank you very much.
Very comprehensive. I think we've got time for one more.
The next question comes from Anubhav Malhotra from Liberum.
Hi, guys. A couple from me, please. Firstly, you have highlighted Japan as one of the key growth markets that you are targeting for long term. Just wanted to understand how that relationship with Asahi has been building. Have you been gaining distribution with them, and what sort of progress you have seen there? Just have some highlights on that. And then secondly, on the marketing, media and marketing has been highlighted a number of times in your presentation as being, as going to play a larger and larger role, in the business in the future. So how do you see that marketing spend developing over the years? Do you think, in order to grow in those, in the newer markets, in the, growth markets, you'll have to invest a bit more, and you see the marketing spend going up?
Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, it's Tim. I'll take those. So Japan, I was out there last year with the Asahi team. And, you know, they're very enthused by the opportunity and the size of the future opportunity, which was great to see. I'm actually out there again in a couple of weeks' time with all their senior team to talk about the updates, because, you know, they're ahead of their plan as it currently is set out, but I think we've got a joint growing ambition. So that's why we call it out, because there's no question that that market is perfect, you know, for the Fever-Tree product, with the manner with which they drink the premium nature of the drink and the occasion that they enjoy there.
So we are optimistic about the medium and long-term future of that market. And just with regards to marketing, look, we've been very consistent historically about the amount of money we have spent on our marketing relative to our revenue. As the revenue grows, we're able to spend more and more. But what we've always said is that, you know, if the occasion is right, we would not be shy in increasing our marketing monies to take advantage of opportunities. And that remains the case. We're not planning on that, but we will keep that option very much at front of mind because, you know, we can see some growing opportunities in the future.
Thank you.
I think we're gonna have to call it a day there. So thank you very much, everyone, for calling in and listening.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.