A barley powder, a mustard merger and a move to Norwich.

Robinsons dates itself to 1823, and the date belongs to a powder rather than a drink. Grace’s Guide, the British industrial-history archive, citing the brand’s own website, says that in 1823 Matthias Robinson and Co made a patent barley and groats product sold in powder form; The Guardian, writing in 2022, also credits Matthias Robinson with the barley crystals in 1823. The business traded in London as Robinson & Belville, a maker of patent groats and barley.

In 1862, English Wikipedia says, Robinson & Belville amalgamated with Keen & Sons, the London mustard maker, to become Keen Robinson & Company; an advertisement of 1894 carries the name “Keen, Robinson & Co., London.” In 1903 Keen Robinson & Company was acquired by J & J Colman, the mustard maker of Norwich. English Wikipedia’s history of Colman’s says the purchase was meant to reduce competition in mustard, and that it brought Colman’s the Robinsons barley water and baby-food business along with it.

The Robinsons history page says production moved to Norwich in 1925, “where it was produced until 2019”; a 2023 local history by Sarah Doig, cited by English Wikipedia, places it at Carrow, the riverside site where Colman’s made its mustard. Colman’s merged with Reckitt & Sons in 1938 to form Reckitt & Colman, which owned Robinsons for most of the twentieth century. For the mustard side of that family, see our Colman’s brand guide.

Lemon barley water, the umpire’s chair and 86 years.

The drink that made the name came out of tennis. The Robinsons history page says that in 1930 “Mr Smedley Hodgson” combined Robinson’s patent barley crystals with real lemon juice and sugar to make a refreshing drink for the players at Wimbledon, and began placing it in their dressing rooms. In 1935, the company says, Lemon Barley Water was introduced and began to appear in bottles on the steps of the umpire’s chair, and Robinsons became the official soft-drink provider for the Championships. The Guardian dates the association to 1935 and names the inventor as Eric Smedley Hodgson, who handed the drink to players and umpires on a visit and was invited back every year.

The partnership became part of the brand’s identity. In 1988, The Guardian reported, Robinsons launched the slogan “anything else just isn’t tennis,” and the company says it marked 75 years with Wimbledon in 2010 and 80 years in 2015, the year it was named Best Sports Sponsor. The company also says it was granted a royal warrant by Queen Elizabeth II in 1955.

The run ended in June 2022. The Guardian and the BBC reported that the 86-year deal — one of the longest in sport, The Guardian said, behind only Wimbledon’s link with the ball supplier Slazenger — would not be renewed. The All England Lawn Tennis Club said it was “tremendously proud of the historic association,” and a Britvic spokesperson confirmed that Robinsons and the club would not renew; neither side gave a reason. A month earlier, The Guardian noted, Robinsons had become official soft-drinks partner of The Hundred, the cricket competition.

The range grew around the squash. The company lists Fruit & Barley in 1994, a Double Concentrate squash in 2011, the pocket-sized Squash’d in 2014 and Fruit Creations in 2017; Britvic dates the children’s drink Fruit Shoot, sold under the Robinsons name, to 2000.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group all make juices, squashes or soft drinks, and all of them are sold in Britain: Robinsons, Copella, Cawston Press, Rubicon, J2O, Shloer and Old Jamaica. British drinks brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still recall a founder or a farm to names that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a pub bar to a supermarket shelf.

A soft-drink brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single recipe than by a bottle or can, a name and the moment it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its drinks are actually made and packed.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its drinks are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Britvic, a factory closure and a Danish brewer.

Robinsons changed hands when Reckitt & Colman left food. In 1995 Unilever bought the Reckitt & Colman food business, and Robinsons was sold on to Britannia Soft Drinks, the parent company of Britvic, for £108 million, according to reports in The Times and The Independent that May, as cited by English Wikipedia.

Under Britvic the Norwich link ended. In 2017 Britvic announced it would close its Norwich factory, and in December that year it confirmed the closure by the end of 2019, with production of Robinsons and Fruit Shoot moving to its sites in Leeds, Rugby and east London and about 242 jobs lost, Proactive Investors reported; chief executive Simon Litherland said: “This was not a proposal that we made lightly.”

The look has been redrawn too. In March 2023 Marketing Week reported the brand’s first significant rebrand in about a decade, by the agency Bloom: a simplified logo, bolder colours and sliced fruit placed at the centre of the pack, applied across the range including Fruit & Barley and Barley Water. The magazine put Robinsons’ retail sales at nearly £200 million in 2022, citing NielsenIQ, with the brand bought by almost half of UK households; brand director Charlotte White called it “a family favourite for over 200 years.”

The owner changed again in 2025. The Danish brewer Carlsberg agreed in July 2024 to buy Britvic for about £3.3 billion, and completed the deal on 16 January 2025 after clearance from the Competition and Markets Authority, The Spirits Business reported; Britvic’s UK business was combined with Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company to form Carlsberg Britvic. Robinsons is now made by Britvic as part of that business.

For a design guide, Robinsons shows how a single sponsorship can shape a brand for most of a century, and how a pack can be redrawn once the sponsorship is gone. Compare Colman’s, its Norwich stablemate for most of the twentieth century, and J2O, a Britvic sibling. For this guide we use court green, barley gold and squash orange with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Robinsons’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.