New visitor centre for Nicolas Feuillatte

Champagne house Nicolas Feuillatte is to launch a new visitor centre and install a new tank room for reserve wines, after reporting sales growth during 2015.

Julie Campos, managing director of Nicolas Feuillatte

The company saw volume growth of 2% in 2015 to 10.8m bottles, driven by sales in the French supermarkets, where lower than normal promotional activity helped the brand boost its turnover. Currently it is the largest brand of Champagne on the French market, with a 4% market share.

Turnover was set at €215m, with a net operating profit of €20.6m but despite the domestic gains, exports, which account for around 45% of sales, were down, largely due to the “fierce competition” in the UK, its largest export market.

However it said it had made progress in “a number of key markets”, including North America and Asia, particularly Canada, Japan, Denmark and Switzerland, as well as opening new markets in India, Brazil and Mexico.

Md Julie Campos said the results underlined the relevance and success of its cooperative model, which has 81 members representing more than 4,500 growers, or around 7% of the appellation.

“Objectives for 2016 will focus on strengthening the brand, developing export markets and increasing value,” she said.

Nicolas Feuillatte is set to develop the brand with a new ad campaign in June to mark its 40^th anniversary, and begin construction of the new Visitor Centre and head offices, and the new tank room, which are all planned to open in Spring 2017.

The company recently signed up Sopexa to manage its PR throughout the year.