Tour de France 2014: Meet the company fuelling the cyclists

The malto dextrine, a carbohydrate that can be rapidly absorbed by the body to provide a fast energy release, is also ordered a year in advance from the supplier, Cargill, to SiS’s exacting requirements. If the characteristics aren’t quite right, then athletes can become bloated or develop stomach problems.

“We are suitably anal about all of that,” says Luke Heeney, SiS’s new product director, who used to work at Unilever and Findus before moving into the expanding world of sports nutrition.

SiS was started by Tim Lawson, a sports science graduate in 1992. Lawson initially began supplying sports drinks to fellow cyclists. Word quickly spread among Britain’s cycling enthusiasts – Chris Boardman was an early convert – and the family was soon hand-rolling other products such as energy bars from their kitchen table.

The Lawsons sold SiS to Provexis, a life sciences company for a reported £8m in 2011, and the Nelson factory was opened to increase production and consolidate operations into one location. Before the sale, parts of SiS were still run out of the Lawsons’ family home. Now its machinery can produce 92 energy gels a minute — 200m a year. But the 1.5m energy bars produced at the Nelson plant annually are still rolled by hand.

Last summer SiS was de-merged from its parent, Provexis. Under chief executive Stephen Moon, a former director at the health care business of GlaxoSmithKline, the company is 12 months into a five-year plan to take advantage of the boom in cycling and other endurance sports such as triathlon, both in this country and further afield.

SiS products are now stocked by several big retailers, including Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Waitrose, in addition to what it describes as its “heartland” — in other words the independent cycle shops that helped spread its popularity.

Some 10pc of its business is now also done directly through the company’s own website — a proportion SiS is keen to grow.

The company’s maiden results as a standalone business showed a 24pc increase in sales to £6.85m in the 12 months to March 31, although losses widened to almost £1.2m after one-off exceptional costs from the demerger.

It has reorganised its distribution agreements in the Europe and Asia-Pacific regions and is eyeing the United States market.

Moon, who helped to develop the Lucozade Sport brand while at GSK, is confident that the market for sports nutrition will continue on its stellar trajectory as cyclists, runners and triathletes become increasingly interested in how to improve their performance.

With amateur cyclists now prepared to spend several thousands of pounds on their bikes, sports nutrition is expected to be the next big area of focus as riders look to shave minutes off their times or push themselves over further distances.

“If you look at any forecast, it’s double-digit,” says Moon.

The value of the global sports nutrition market was estimated to be £29.1bn last year, according to Leatherhead Food Research — of which the UK is believed to account for £435m.

Analysts at Sanlam Securities believe SiS can grow revenues to £10.1m by the end of its 2016 financial year. “Its USP [unique selling point], a trustworthy and credible brand, provides an opportunity to enhance its brand revenues from an increase in the number of new and repeat orders and spend per person from its customer base,” the broker said in a note.

SiS is just one of the British companies that is benefiting from the ballooning interest in cycling in this country, which has been spurred on by the success of UK professional cyclists, including last year’s Tour de France winner, Chris Froome, and Sir Bradley Wiggins. Froome, of Team Sky, is clothed by British cycling clothing brand, Rapha.

According to the latest official figures, 2.1m adults in England alone are now regularly riding bikes, an increase of 132,000 since October 2013.

Private equity has been alert for some time to the money to be made from Britain’s new-found obsession with cycling but now institutional investors are apparently keen to hitch a ride.

Wiggle, the online bike retailer, is mulling a potential flotation.

In April, SiS raised a further £2.1m after expenses through an over-subscribed share placing, which brought new institutional investors on to its share register.

As former GSK employees, both Moon and SiS’s non-executive chairman, John Clarke, who was global president of GSK’s consumer health care business from 2006 to 2011, will be acutely aware that if they get it right, the big consumer and pharmaceutical companies are also likely to come knocking.

In 2010, GSK bought Maxinutrition, a UK company whose products became popular among body-builders and “gym bunnies”, for £162m.

It may all have started with a simple love of cycling but British companies like SiS are pedalling themselves into the money.

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