Pepsi helps profits to bubble at Britvic

Bubbling demand for Britvic's fizzy drinks including Pepsi and 7Up in the UK helped its revenues rise 4.8 per cent to £303.2m in the three months to today.

The drinks group, which makes and sells PepsiCo brands in Britain and Ireland, also set out plans to accelerate distribution of its Fruit Shoot drink across the US from nine states to 30 by the summer.

The drink's faulty cap damaged Britvic's profit last year.

It has also agreed a deal to distribute Fruit Shoot across Spain from early this year. It said production levels of the drink were now back to historic levels seen before the cap crisis.

Britvic is currently waiting for approval from the Office of Fair Trading on its merger with Irn-Bru maker AG Barr.