Why Rich Energy faces a huge battle

Juergen Rauch remembers the first time Dietrich Mateschitz turned up at their factory in Rankweil, Austria, asking his father if they would be able to facilitate a small production run. The Rauch family business had been in operation since 1919 and was renowned for its fruit juices.

Switching production lines over to a low-volume run of Mateschitz's new product, something called an energy drink, seemed like a risk. In the end Rauch Sr agreed and when, not long after, Mateschitz came back to place a second order, the family's decision to supply the ambitious young entrepreneur was vindicated. As sales of Red Bull gathered momentum at home and expanded across Europe, production soared.

In January 2005 Peter Huls and Roland Concin showed me around the facility. Huls was the winemaker whom Mateschitz had employed to help develop the flavour of Red Bull. Concin, the head of operations, was tasked with getting it produced.

As we stood in front of one of the mesmerising production lines, Concin explained that it was producing 90,000 cans of Red Bull every hour. There were four such lines. One hundred cans of Red Bull every second - packed, palletised, sent to the warehouse and then onto trains heading to Hamburg and Bremerhaven for shipping.

Four years previously I had sat in meetings at Jordan Grand Prix listening to plans for the team to diversify into energy drinks. EJ10 was the product, and the gentleman employed to oversee it at the behest of the team's private equity investors was predicting annual revenues of $250million. The team, he forecast, would become self-funding.

Except it didn't quite work out that way. The problems included production, distribution, marketing and sales. In other words, everything. Getting retail outlets to stock it in the face of withering competition was difficult and ultimately terminal.

It was tough then, even more now that the market has matured. Ask Bertrand Gachot, owner of Hype Energy, sponsor of Racing Point. It's taken the former F1 driver years of graft to make a success of it.

Into this arena has arrived London-based Rich Energy. That it has chosen to become title sponsor of Haas is good news. Furthermore, it is a multi-year agreement. The company's spectacularly bearded chief executive William Storey does not want for confidence.

Rich Energy apparently has billionaire investors and, at the livery launch in London's RAC Club, I met Jack Sullivan, MD of West Ham United Women's Team, coincidentally sponsored by Rich Energy. Jack is the 19-year-old son of David Sullivan who, along with David Gold, bought West Ham in 2010. Gold, along with brother Ralph, owns businesses including Ann Summers, run
 by David's daughter, Jacqueline. An impressive network.

Storey is forecasting 2019 revenue of nine figures, with distribution and sales focusing on clubs, casinos and hotels. High street retail distribution is set to follow. Describing Rich Energy as a British-owned premium competitor to Red Bull, Storey is setting out to put a big dent in the energy drinks market.

Whether you view this as bullish confidence or utter bullshit is for the energy drinks market to determine and, given the nature of this cut-throat industry, it shouldn't take long to find out.

Storey is nothing if not ambitious and Haas must hope he succeeds, because that will ensure the money keeps flowing. For any F1 team that's all that matters.