I think there are a couple of factors. Primarily it's about value of soft drinks. Consumers see it as a relatively low-priced item so, as they've been making their decisions about where they cut their costs, I think soft drinks probably haven't been at the top of the list. And the second thing is the market has being driven really quite successfully during the year by brands. Brands have a big emotional tie with the consumer so, as they're making their choice, branded soft drinks fits within their basket very easily.

The market overall is now, encouragingly, showing some growth. From a single-digit decline in the last 12 weeks or so we've seen some market growth, so that's good news for the whole market. From our perspective, what we've been focusing on is the strength of our core brands, so brands like Pepsi, Robinsons, J2O, have been driven very hard with some excellent consumer promotions and they've worked very well for us. We've continued to innovate in the right way, extending the Drench brand into Juicy Drench, adding value to the Robinsons brand with 'be Natural'. And we've worked very hard with our customers to build category understanding, and to help them build their category and continue to offer great value to their shoppers.

I think the shopper generally, and it's no different for Britvic, is chasing value. That's evident from the pricing that you see in supermarkets. And what we've done in conjunction with our customers is deliver great value to shoppers. The other dynamic which is really important is that brands do have a really important role to play in people's purchasing habits. So in other categories we may have seen some shift towards own label. That's certainly not been the case in soft drinks where brands, particularly our own brands where we've grown our volume and value share, have delivered great value and, therefore, consumers have remained loyal to them.

The market itself is really quite challenged, but I think it's challenged at the bottom end rather than the top end. So in the area of food and family-led pubs where we have a very strong share we've seen that market begin to grow in the low 2 per cent to 3 per cent. At the bottom end - the wet-led pubs - to be frank, there's relatively low consumption of soft drinks so we've not seen any real erosion of our business. But in overall terms we've grown our share of that market to something approaching now 45 per cent so, although still challenged, we do see that as a very successful part of our business.

We think it is sustainable because the fundamentals of the business are very strong. As we look out over the next one to three years we see three or four key drivers of our future growth. One would be about market growth. We believe that will recover to something more normalised, around the 2 per cent to 3 per cent that we'd seen for the preceding 10 years before the recession. We see pricing and our ability to manage pricing, both at promotional level but headline being an important part. We continue to see innovation as an integral part of our organic growth. And interestingly for us, what we also see is some real 'white space' opportunity. By that, I mean new channels and new accounts where we can drive distribution that we don't currently have. So we're confident on the basis of real business fundamentals rather than a hope and an expectation that it will flow through.

I really wish I could say yes, but, actually, the macroeconomic situation is still so challenged it's unlikely we'll see soft drinks recover in the near term. What we're focusing on are two things. One is driving our Internal Change programme that will realise the synergies that we've discussed. And the second thing is making sure that we're holding and, where possible, growing our share of the key categories. And so far, with one or two exceptions, we've achieved that very successfully in the last year.

As we've said on a number of occasions before, we do see an opportunity for consolidation in the European market. We've talked about that in the context of Pepsi, but we've also talked about that in the context of our own ambition to build our presence. I think the acquisition in Ireland has given us great confidence that, notwithstanding the macroeconomic problems, we can actually assimilate businesses and then drive real value. So, yes, our ambition remains the same. When the opportunity arises, that's the moment we'll pursue it.

It's interesting, because we've seen already evidence that it's a low-ticket item and consumers are loyal to the brands. As we look at our innovation programme, we've got a really exciting pipeline of different brands, different products and, indeed, different packages. We'll probably hold those until we see consumer confidence recovering, when they become more experimental and that's the moment that we can drive towards launching some of our new ideas, all of which will be at the top end in terms of premium versus economy.

I think the outlook is incredibly encouraging. We've managed our way through a challenging year, as everybody would understand. We've delivered outstanding top-line and bottom-line growth. Crucially, we've delivered it in the right way. We've grown our share with our core brands. We've managed our costs appropriately. We've successfully refinanced the business in the early part of the year and, indeed, we've recently done a US private placement. So we think the signs are very encouraging. We've got a well-invested business, well structured. We've got very strong brands and have delivered a strong performance in what's been a really quite challenging economic environment. We have a very strong track record of both top line and earnings and we're very confident that, as we look out, we can continue to deliver that strong performance.