IRN-Bru maker AG Barr has given in to the so-called sugar tax by cutting the amount of the sweet stuff from its best known brands.
The Lanarkshire-based firm which has previously criticised the "punitive" crackdown on the fizzy drinks industry and the "significant weight of negative media coverage" of sugary drinks, says that 90 per cent of its brands will contain less than 5g of total sugar per 100ml by the autumn of this year.
The company, which also makes Tizer and Snapple, has been taking action to reformulate drinks in advance of the Government's new levy coming into force next year.
Barr chief executive Roger White said: "Evidence shows that consumers want to reduce their sugar intake while still enjoying great tasting drinks.
"We've responded by significantly reducing sugar across our portfolio in recent years, through reformulation and innovation.
"Today's announcement builds on this progress and we are now expanding our successful sugar reduction plans to include our iconic Irn-Bru brand."
In September, Barr said that the contentious sugar tax, proposed by former chancellor George Osborne in March, 2015, to combat child obesity "will be very complex, expensive and difficult to implement" and said it was a "punitive and unnecessary distortion to competition in the UK market".
But it has aimed to have at least two-thirds of its products either as no or low sugar by the time the levy is introduced in April 2018 to avoid the tax.
Coca-Cola while having no plans to change the recipe of its classic drink, Coca-Cola European Partners , which sells the brand in the UK, invested £10 million in 2016 in reformulating and promoting Coca-Cola Zero Sugar - its biggest UK launch in over a decade.
The company expected to have more than half the Coca-Cola sold to escape the tax, instead of 45 per cent previously.
A study by Brand View found that more soft drinks now contain sweeteners than sugar. At Tesco, the UK's largest grocer, 49.5 per cent of soft drinks had sweeteners against 42.5 per cent with sugar, according to its data.
But the British Soft Drinks Association, the main industry body, has previously said that worldwide evidence does not suggest that taxes of this sort have any impact on levels of obesity.
A Barr spokesman added: "It is well known that consumers are increasingly concerned about sugar and that most want to see lower levels of sugar in the soft drinks they buy. However they also tell us just how important taste is, without compromise.
"Above all we know that our loyal drinkers love Irn-Bru for its unique great taste. From autumn this year Irn-Bru will still have its unique great taste but with less sugar. Irn-Bru will remain a sugary drink, we are simply reducing the sugar level."
In 2015, Roger White, the chief executive of AG Barr took a swipe at supermarkets’ vilification of soft drinks as part of the ongoing so-called war on sugar.
He complained that soft drinks have been made the enemy of health food campaigners while the makers of sugar-laden snacks had not been targeted in the same way.
Mr White claimed that the drinks industry had been working hard to provide “ready alternatives and sugar-free products, whereas if a customer wants a cake or a chocolate bar there are no sugar-free alternative to cakes or chocolate”.
In February, the Cumbernauld-based firm said it is on track to meet full-year profit guidance, but flagged another challenging year ahead.
Last year, AG Barr announced it was cutting 90 jobs as part of a company-wide revamp expected to cost around £4 million.
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