AG Barr Trek: From the classroom to application

20 April 2016

And why not! Such opportunities give a business graduate the real picture of the world outside business school, and help them to understand how the classroom learnings can be put into application. This time, I was one of the lucky grads selected for the company visit to ‘AG Barr’, located in the middle of Scotland at Cumbernauld, Glasgow. Students from Human Resource management (HRM), International Human Resource Management (IHRM) and International Business and Emerging Markets (IBEM) were chosen for the trip, which started on 30 March 2016 at 12 noon from the Business School.

If you have ever heard of the world-class products such as ‘Irn-Bru’, ‘J2O’, 'BARR ice-cream soda', 'BARR Limeade' and many more, then I’d say you’re drinking one of the world-class soft drink products from AG Barr. The Barr stands for four important behaviours: who they are, how they work, what they believe in, and how they behave, so that the company can achieve success and greater success in the future. The company visit to Barr included a presentation and Q&A session, a visit to the manufacturing plant, understanding the Barr’s work culture and the products. The visit was extremely beneficial to students as they got chances to interact with the employees, executives, and workers of the Barr plant.

From its history to present, from naïve business to pioneer soft drink brand, every single phase that the company went through has been beautifully captured in the Barr timeline museum. All these showed the immense hard-work, competition, and challenges the company has had to undergo! The famous Scottish national drink ‘Iron-brew’ (now Irn-Bru) is a product of Barr Company that started in the business of quenching the nation’s thirst in 1875. In our interaction with Barr’s company HR, we got to know what the company has been doing so far; what the company’s vision is for the next 5 years; and how the company is exploring new markets in Scandinavian countries, Russian and North European markets. They claim they are more than just ginger! Well! Frankly speaking they are huge. The company has exciting partnerships with third party owners, licenses from the US company ‘Rockstar Inc.’, ‘Snapple beverages’ and ‘Funkin limited’. That shows how quickly the company is evolving and how the Barr brand is appreciated worldwide.

Apart from discussions and the questionnaire session, our team also asked challenging questions to the company’s HR team regarding their position in UK’s sugar tax policy, gender equality in the workplace and high attrition rates. The answers were to the point and very satisfying; the Company has taken very supportive and strong decisions with the UK government’s sugar cut policy and to maintain gender equality in the workplace. We also got a chance to visit the actual manufacturing plant, and the chance to understand the stages each product has to undergo from packaging to quality check.

Overall, the visit to Barr was very insightful and helpful in understanding the operations, decision making, global strategy and marketing tactics of the company. ‘Barr’, is the right kind of company, where every graduate would love to work. Barr behaviour is all about capturing and nurturing the essence of the business that has made it successful. Barr truly stands strong up to its acronym: Being brilliant, Always learning, Results driven, Relationships that deliver.

Janmejoy Mukherjee is a MSc International Business and Emerging Markets student who recently attended the trek to AG Barr in Glasgow.