THE boss of Britvic, Britain’s second-biggest soft-drinks company, looks a pretty sharp act: grey stripey shirt, toning grey trousers, short and slim build with a one-inch buzz cut crowning beady dark eyes. He even has a grey Porsche to match.

Bumping into him on the stairs at his London PR firm, I would have taken him for an advertising executive or record-company chief. But Paul Moody, it turns out, is a drinks boss who just likes organisation with a bit of flair. Let’s hope next month’s flotation of Britvic is as thought-out and co-ordinated as his threads.

You can’t help admiring the man’s style, though. The Porsche, for instance, helps compensate for the two-and-a-quarter-hour drive from his Loughborough home to Britvic’s base in Chelmsford, Essex. He spends the time listening to pounding guitar rock — Queens of the Stone Age is a current favourite.

That, you would think, would sap the energy of most bosses aged 48 but Moody is as thoroughly modern as he looks. He has no office. He works from a laptop, hot-desking wherever there is space. “I go into Chelmsford about two days in ten. The rest is on the hoof.”

Perhaps it is a smart move when you consider the size and spread of Britvic — £700m turnover, 3,000 employees, sites from Solihull to Hartlepool, brands including Tango, R White’s, Robinsons and Pepsi (for which it has the British franchise).

But are there many FTSE 250 bosses who do the same? I wonder. Little surprise that Moody, formerly at dairy firm Eden Vale and Mars, and managing director of Britvic for the past two years, is known for being highly organised. He doesn’t expect that to change when he is retitled chief executive.

“The key is that there will be more externals to deal with.

My style is very involved and engaged. I have to take that and externalise it, talking to fund managers and analysts and media in a way I haven’t done in the past. How I manage that while maintaining my connection with the business — that’s the challenge.”

And no jokes about him being a good communicator because his East End dad was a cab driver. “Otherwise I’d be doing all of it like this,” he says, twisting his head round to talk over his shoulder.

He will need that sense of humour as critics pick over the Britvic float before Christmas. They will be questioning the company’s products, strategy and relationships, not to mention the generous valuation being touted — £800m — and the reasons Britvic’s owners want to sell in the first place.

The business, originally British Vitamin Product Company, has a heritage going back to the 19th century. More recently it has bought in a host of other people’s drinks interests — Canada Dry Rawlings in 1986; Robinsons in 1995; Orchid (Aqua Libra and Purdey’s) in 2000; Red Devil in 2002; and Pennine Spring in 2004.

It has also buffed up a reputation for imaginative marketing (You’ve Been Tango’d) and innovative product development (J2O and Fruit Shoot), that has boosted growth beyond the industry average.

But its history left it with a tangled ownership that the float will resolve. Major shareholders such as InterContinental Hotels Group, Whitbread and Pernod Ricard are selling their stakes. PepsiCo will retain 5%. Woolworth’s Gerald Corbett will replace InterContinental’s Richard Solomons as chairman.

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