For over 25 years I’ve been involved closely with multiple FMCG brands, innovating, bringing them to market, distributing them and then successfully exiting.
Pomegreat, the UK’s first pomegranate juice drink, was the first brand I launched and successfully exited. I spent a lot of time in India, Iran and Turkey meticulously sourcing trusted high-quality pomegranate juice and concentrate suppliers. Ultimately I found exactly what I wanted in Afghanistan. We brought it into the UK through the Khyber Pass, something that wouldn’t be possible today. That was challenging.
In 2018 I worked with the founders of Love Hemp at the start of their journey, helping them to grow it into a £9 million business before we sold it to a group of Canadian entrepreneurs in 2019 just before Covid. It was one of the first CBD brands to launch and it taught me a lot about the unique challenges of the CBD market, particularly around the rules and regulations of Novel Foods.
Alongside my role as commercial director at Windfall Logistics, a back office and logistics company with over 70 UK and multi-national brands under our management, last year, I co-founded a new business: SKÏP Drinks.
SKÏP Drinks contains an innovative new ingredient in the market: cold-pressed CBD. These drinks combine real fruit juices, botanicals, and 5mg of CBD. They are currently available nationwide in 625 Home Bargains stores and online.
CBD regulation
A lot has changed in the CBD industry since working with Love Hemp. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) confirmed CBD’s novel food status in January 2019. It means that CBD products require authorisation before they can be legally sold in the UK.
This is because the FSA considers CBD a novel food because it does not have a history of significant human consumption in the EU before May 1997.
For any sku to continue to trade containing CBD post-March 2020, it needs to have submitted an application to the FSA. This will assign it an RP number with a status attached to it.
Since then, the FSA has issued a series of guidance updates, the most recent on 1 July 2025, when it encouraged CBD businesses to reformulate following new scientific advice. The FSA is “encouraging” businesses to meet a CBD provisional acceptable daily intake of 10mg per day of CBD and to not breach the THC safe upper limit of 0.07mg per day.
Backing the right brands
As with any sector there’s always going to be ups and downs, challenges and frustrations, but the hurdles in growing a CBD brand are in a real league of their own.
If I was a ‘wet behind the ears’ entrepreneur, I would have walked away from the CBD market and all its trials and tribulations.
There are of course many brands operating in the CBD soft drinks space, all of which are not currently complying with the guidance issued by the FSA. The switch from guidance to legal ruling is imminent.
Our category defining cold-pressed CBD is pressed (not extracted), created in the UK and our proprietary process allows it to sit outside any regulations related to Novel Foods. We know it’s a game changer.
We’ve worked on it with a team of scientific researchers at the University of Oxford covering 54 pieces of research to prove the benefits of a cold pressed CBD versus an Isolate is at least 8x when delivered in a soft drink. Taste and refreshment remain the core constituents in any soft drink, and we are well experienced in this regard.
It gives buyers a product range which navigates the tightening regulatory environment around CBD while also offering consumers a healthy choice.
In all my years in business, I’ve never seen a market quite like the CBD one. Right from the start it really captured customers’ interest and the growth in the sector was unprecedented.
Regulation has always been absolutely necessary and what has been frustrating is that it is taking far longer than the industry expected.
Since 2019, the CBD market has rocketed from £314 million to a huge £690 million just three years later with an explosion in the choice of products, from oils, capsules and oral drops, to soft drinks, beer and tea. Many of these can be picked up from high street stores and supermarkets and the price range – and quality - can vary significantly.
In terms of the consumer CBD market, the UK is second only to the USA with increasing demand for quality products.
It’s exciting that there’s so much innovation in the CBD space and it’s one of the most dynamic sectors in FMCG today. Statistics show that 90% of growth in soft drinks is coming from functional drinks and the CBD soft drinks market grew 62% last year. (IRI 52 weeks to 17 May, 2025)
In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) acknowledged the potential therapeutic benefits of CBD and highlighted the need for continued research. The report suggested that CBD may be helpful in treating symptoms of various conditions including cancer, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, anxiety, depression and insomnia.
There’s also a huge number of customers anecdotally reporting that products make a difference to their lives in terms of their health and wellbeing.
Perhaps it’s only now, with the latest FSA announcement, that the playing field will finally start to level and many brands will have to reformulate to come into line with the guidance. How retailers react will be critical.
I believe that we should be getting behind the brands that do it right from the start because they’ve got the potential to make a difference to the lives of millions of people across the world.
