The two brands, both 60 years old, came together five years ago in 2009. They now have four plants in Portugal, one in Mozambique and another in Angola.
“We see a good future in the expanding African market,” said COO Rui Frade.
Each year, the R&D team at its Almarein site come up with around 400 formulations, 80 variants and 20 new flavour blends, some of which make it to the store shelves.
The company, also known for its carbonated and still water, canned vegetables and tomato products (30,000 tonnes of these) also bottles one of the faster-growing categories, Lipton ice tea.
Essencial, the single portion of fruit in the little round bottle, won in our Beverage Innovation Awards in 2007 and has gone on to be one of their most successful products, sold in supermarkets, stations and in the HoReCa sector.
The most popular among our tasting team were strawberry and peach, while I thought the plum one had the requisite freshness of ‘the next big thing’.
We have just heard some enlightening global predictions on industry market trends from Zenith International chairman Richard Hall, followed by a fun presentation on crowdsourcing from eYevca’s Francois Pétavy. More details on those soon. Right now, I’m off to taste more beverage innovations at the Welcome Reception.
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