'We wanted an established brand as a trampoline to build our spirits business in its local market and then go global' - Maspex marketing director Kamil Gebski speaks to Global Drinks Intel

A brace of acquisitions has brought Polish food and drinks company Maspex Group into the spirits category in the last two years. To hear more about the business’s plans for the Żubrówka and Becherovka brands, Global Drinks Intel editor Olly Wehring caught up with marketing director Kamil Gebski.

Global Drinks Intel: Who are you?

Kamil Gebski, marketing director at Maspex: I’m the marketing director for CEDC International, which is part of Maspex Group. We call this business unit Maspex Spirits, and we have several huge local alcohol brands. As well as being a brand owner, we’re also a distributor of international spirits brands, but I work on the brand owner side.

I joined the unit in 2022 from Maspex’s beverages unit. I didn’t have a spirits background, so I’ve had to learn a lot about the category. Poland is a big spirits producer, especially of vodka, where we have great heritage and strong brands. In recent years, however, the category has been frozen in the country – there haven’t been many innovations in spirits in Poland recently. My first discovery was that there’s a lot of space for innovation in spirits generally and in Polish vodka in particular.

GDI: Which brands are in Maspex’s spirits portfolio?

KG: The biggest is Żubrówka (acquired from Roust Corp in 2022), which is a famous Polish vodka and number three (in volumes) in the world. Żubrówka is our main focus globally, with 25% of the brand’s sales coming from exports.

We also own Soplica, which is a vodka and a range of liqueurs. While Soplica is number eight globally, most of its exports are to markets with big Polish populations, such as the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

GDI: How have you gone about innovating with Żubrówka, which leans heavily into its provenance cues (each bottle contains a blade of bison grass from the Białowieża Forest in Poland, which is a UNESCO world heritage site)?

KG: While this was a challenge, it was also the biggest hook we could use to build something new for Żubrówka. The brand proposition communicates that this product comes from nature. We started to think about the heart of the brand as being wilderness and from this developed a platform for communication and innovation around going wild. It’s related very much to high-energy consumption occasions.

To show a more energetic and wild side of Żubrówka, in May last year we launched Fresh Żu, which has four flavours based on mixology. The Sour Apple version is based on the hero serve of Żubrówka with apple juice – it’s like our Aperol Spritz! In Poland today, half of Żubrówka’s market share comes from the bison grass original, the other half comes from this new proposition.

GDI: Maspex also hit the the headlines late last year, acquiring the Becherovka bitters from Pernod Ricard.

KG: Becherovka is a heritage brand and is well-known in its domestic markets (Czechia and Slovakia). We wanted a strong, established brand as a base to work from – like a trampoline for building our spirits business in its local market and then abroad.

I believe Becherovka has great potential internationally, where there’s a big trend towards bitters. Brands like Jägermeister and Aperol have been selling bitters in a totally different way – they’ve built a capacity in consumers to try bitter drinks. Becherovka is very easy to drink, with its herbal and fruity taste with a bit of cinnamon.

Also, Czechia has a great image through its culture, humour and cinema. I believe we can take this heritage and build something that can work internationally.

GDI: What is Maspex’s M&A strategy in spirits?

KG: Very often, our acquisitions have been of strong brands that still have a lot of opportunity. That was the case with Żubrówka and Becherovka is a continuation of this strategy.

Maspex is a leading company in Central & Eastern Europe – a position that’s been built over the last 30 years. We are still young. The people who established the company are still owning and running it, so it has entrepreneurship in its blood. That gives us the power to find a brand that’s interesting and make it innovative and super-relevant so that it can grow.

GDI: Which spirits category would you like Maspex to make an acquisition in next?

KG: It doesn’t work like that. It’s not like we dream about a specific category. It’s more that we’re looking for an opportunity. We’ll look at the potential of a brand – What else can we do with it? With Becherovka, it seems like we can do a lot, like we’ve already started with Żubrówka.

GDI: Anything else to declare?

KG: With Żubrówka, it’s important for us to explain that while it’s a heritage brand, it’s also undergoing a super-fast evolution – almost a revolutionary evolution – towards being an innovative spirits brand. We want it to be like a contemporary masterpiece in the museum!

If the industry understands this strategy, then it will really help the brand. I get the impression that the spirits industry tends to be a little bit conservative. Our ‘Żubrówka Wild’ approach is a good tool to make traditional vodka rock again and rejuvenate the whole category.