Advise enters UK with EUR €1.8 million boost & new hires

Advise has announced its expansion into the UK market, supported by a EUR €1.8 million investment and plans to hire ten new staff members.

The company, which provides AI-powered data analytics services tailored for consumer-packaged goods (CPG) businesses, will base its UK growth on its AI platform that automates and analyses large volumes of data to deliver market insights and recommendations to clients in the sector.

UK market entry

The move into the UK is the start of Advise's international growth strategy. With the UK CPG market estimated to be worth about EUR €24 billion, Advise gauges its current addressable market in the country at around EUR €2 billion. The company indicated that as more CPG firms adopt AI technologies, this addressable market is expected to expand further.

The company's forecast is for its customer base to double within the next year. It also predicts that its revenues will increase twofold by the end of 2026 and continue to double annually beyond that period.

Advise's CEO and Co-Founder, Dr Kevin McCarthy, and Commercial Director and Co-Founder, John Phelan, are leading the expansion efforts. The ten new hires are intended to support operations and sales as the company delivers its platform to UK clients. The platform integrates generative AI and agentic AI features to process and collate data from disparate sources, with the aim of improving decision-making processes for CPG businesses.

UK client experience

Advise's relationship with UK-based G's Fresh, its first client in the market, marks one year since implementation. G's Fresh is a major provider of fresh produce, reporting annual revenues in excess of GBP £550 million. The company manages crop production across 17,500 hectares and supplies a range of products, from salad leaves to fresh vegetables, in the UK, Europe and North America.

Speaking about the company's ongoing UK presence, John Phelan said:

Our expansion into the UK is just the first step in our international expansion strategy as we continue on a path of rapid and ambitious growth. The size of the UK market and its strong appetite for innovation will allow us to extend our market reach and grow our customer base. Globally, brands are coming under increasing pressure to boost efficiency while reducing costs. Although the demand for smarter, more agile solutions is evident, many companies are struggling to identify the right AI solutions to meet their needs. Our team has more than 20 years of experience in researching and developing AI technologies. As a result, we have a product that can not only make recommendations, but explain them, too. It will change the way an entire industry does things – for the better – and now, the time is right for us to expand into the UK. Our entry into the market also marks our first year working with G's Fresh, one of the biggest brand names in fresh produce. For them, and many others, we are redefining how they approach analytics to make the right decisions, faster.

Matt Godbold, Category Marketing Director at G's Fresh, shared his department's perspective on Advise's platform:

The Advise platform has been a game-changer for my department. Gone are the days where we would spend hours processing data. Advise delivers high-quality, customised insights to the G's Fresh dashboard at speed. It's easy, it's efficient, and effortlessly combines multiple data sources from EPOS, panel and survey data to show where the market drivers are. It allows me to shift my focus from manual analysis to driving real business growth.

Anticipated growth

Advise's UK strategy builds on what it describes as sustained success in Ireland, where it lists customers such as Britvic, Pilgrim Food Masters, Tayto, Kerry and Dr Oetker. The company's AI SaaS platform is developed specifically for the needs of CPG manufacturers, processing sales, inventory and customer data from multiple retailers for its users.

By investing in new staff and focusing on its AI-driven platform, Advise believes that its move into the UK will provide an avenue for revenue and customer growth in the next several years.