Ribena

Ribena ( rye-BEE-nə) is a British blackcurrant-based soft drink (both carbonated and uncarbonated) and squash. It is available in bottles, cans, and multi-packs. Originally of English origin, it was produced by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) until 2013, when the brand was sold to Japanese beverage conglomerate Suntory. The brand originally had a strong reputation as a healthy product for children, stemming from its distribution to children as a vitamin C supplement during World War II by the British government. Beecham, a company that has been part of GSK since 2000, bought the brand in 1955 and developed many soft drink versions. A series of scandals in the 2000s, concerning vitamin C levels, sugar levels, and the amounts of actual fruit in some of the brands, damaged its reputation as a healthy product, and by 2013, the brand was widely regarded as a soft drink. In 2013, annual worldwide sales were around £500 million. That year, GSK sold Ribena and another consumer line, Lucozade, to the Japanese multinational Suntory for £1.35 billion (equivalent to £1.89 billion in 2025). In April 2018, in the United Kingdom, Ribena's longstanding recipe was changed by the addition of artificial sweeteners in response to the introduction of a sugary drinks tax by the British government.