Roberson to retire from Buckingham Schenk

Founder and chairman of Buckingham Schenk, Cliff Roberson, is to leave the importer next month.

Cliff Roberson

Roberson, who established the business in 1974, has sold his remaining shareholding to European wine group Schenk to focus his efforts entirely on his other business, retailer and wholesaler Roberson Wine.

He changed the name of his import operation Buckingham Vintners to Buckingham Schenk having given up his majority shareholding to the Swiss-based Schenk five years ago.

He gave the wine group a 75% stake in the UK business, having initially sold them 25% of the business in 1994, and then a further 50% in 2007.

Having just sold his remaining 25% of the operation, Roberson, who is 72, is now free to focus his time on Roberson Wine.

Speaking to the drinks business earlier today, Jon Pepper, managing director of Buckingham Schenk said, “Cliff has spent most of his career more focused on Buckingham than Roberson because Buckingham has been so demanding.

“However,” he continued, “he has always wanted to throw himself into Roberson” – a retail operation founded by Cliff in 1991.

Now Roberson has given up all his shares in Buckingham Schenk, the importer is a fully owned subsidiary of Schenk, which, with sales of 200 million bottles each year, is the fourteenth biggest wine company in the world, according to Pepper.

Currently, around 80% of the wine imported by Buckingham Schenk is from Schenk’s wineries across Europe, which include Schenk Italia, a north Italian based co-operative producing around 80 million bottles annually.

Buckingham-Schenk will retain its name, although it has now become effectively the European wine group’s UK sales office, explained Pepper.

“This means we are essentially buying direct, which brings a cost benefit for our customers,” he added.

Pepper, who was promoted to the role of managing director of Buckingham Schenk 18 months ago, explained that Roberson has been “slowing stepping back over the last 18 months and he’s now in the office for half a day per week.”

Among the changes instigated by Pepper over this period has been an expansion in the importer’s customer base.

“We were very focused on the major multiples so I have been working on diversifying our business and we are now working well with Majestic for example, and we are looking at the next level, such as regional distributors.”

Nevertheless, he said that there was still “more opportunity” for Buckingham Schenk within the supermarket sector, adding, “We are set up to service large UK customers and we have 40 years experience doing just that.”

A further development for Buckingham has been the importer’s appointment as “exclusive sales and marketing partner” for Wine Innovations, the producer of the sealed plastic wine goblet, currently used by Marks & Spencer’s for its Le Froglet brand.

“It’s really exciting and sells fantastically well,” said Pepper.

“There is a thriving business in train stations and outdoor events because it puts the treat back into the portable wine experience.”

Meanwhile, he said that (Cliff) Roberson would be working on growing Roberson Wine through enlarging its private client and wholesale business, but also “expanding internationally”.

He concluded by noting that recent Roberson retailing innovations were “going really well,” citing Cliff’s decision to sell fine wine at wholesale prices to customers of his Kensington High Street shop.