CASE STUDY: CONSUMER BUSINESS
At a glance
29
£130m
€30m
MEET THE CLIENT
A reputation built on a stubborn commitment to quality
Liberty Wines is one of the UK’s leading premium wine distributors, working with over 430 producers across 28 countries and supplying many of the UK’s top hotels, restaurants and independent wine merchants.
Founded in 1997, on the principle of being “stubbornly quality-focused”, the business has been profitable every year since, successfully navigating everything from the global financial crisis, Brexit and COVID, while maintaining a strong culture centred on people, quality and long-term relationships. In 2014, Liberty Wines became the first UK wine company to achieve carbon neutral certification. In 2021, they went a step further, by gaining Carbon Neutral Plus certification.
THE CHALLENGE
Finding certainty in an uncertain market.
Sourcing wines from more than 28 countries means keeping a close eye on currency movements which can influence everything from pricing and purchasing decisions to long-term planning. With around €30m of annual FX exposure, and in an increasingly volatile market, Liberty Wines needed to do better than its budget rate every year.
THE SOLUTION
The strongest hedging position in history.
When Iain joined Liberty Wines in 2025, he was keen to discuss some strategic adjustments to reflect the more volatile landscape: ˝I felt we needed an FX approach that would give us greater participation. Our conversations with Investec helped us to take things further.”
Investec restructured the forward-contract strategy with a more open-ended approach, running across two currencies alongside the core hedging. This gave Liberty Wines real headroom and a strategy built for more volatile conditions. Iain has been pleased with the flexibility it offers: “I think we’re in a much stronger place now, with the strongest hedging policy we’ve put in place since the business has been around.”
THE OUTCOME
Investec’s longest-standing FX client relationship.
What began as an FX mandate has become Investec’s longest-standing FX client relationship – built on trust, an intuitive trading platform, and the reassurance of having someone there at the end of the phone. As Iain notes: “Investec’s approach, and the platform they have built around it, is very user-friendly, which suits a business like ours. What really works is the natural interaction between the technology and the human element.”
WHAT’S NEXT
Always thinking ahead.
As Liberty Wines approaches its 30th anniversary in 2027, Iain is doing what he has always done – looking further ahead than most. “I’m much more interested in what we’re doing in three months’ time, six months’ time, even 12-plus months’ time – because if no one else is thinking about those things, then they suddenly come across us and cause us problems.”
With a more sophisticated hedging approach in place, the task for Iain and the rest of the Liberty Wines team is to keep building on the company's success, regardless of what the currency markets do.
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