Snow fell during our plant tour to Coca-Cola ?çecek in Corlu, the most densely populated region of Turkey. However, it didn’t detract from this sleek production line boasting formats from 20cl to 2.5-litre PET, using efficient compressed air, at just 17 bars, for bottle rinsing on its PET and aseptic PET lines when the average is 33 bars.
There are eight plants and 46 lines within ?çecek, which produces 250,000 cases a day. Noted for being the best plant regarding water and energy conservation in the whole Coca-Cola system, the water used in production has been reduced from the Coca-Cola average of 2.43 litres to 1.48 litres per litre of drink bottled.
The Congress opened officially that evening, with cocktails in the Conrad Summit Bar, with panoramic views of the old city and Bosphorus.
Michael O’Neil of Coca-Cola ?çecek opened the Congress on 9 March, highlighting that 60% of the population in Turkey is below the age of 29, offering huge potential for growth in soft drinks.
Monther Al Harthis, CEO of Al Rabie Saudi Foods Company, underlined how this is the largest Tetra Pak facility in the Middle East, with 500m litres capacity, and again mentioning the young demographic of this region.
Ebru Akdag, general secretary of the Turkish Juice Association, explained how cola was losing share to orange drinks, with juice and iced tea also growing in popularity. Zenith International chairman Richard Hall then gave a roundup of global figures, the most striking being volume in the emerging market of China: up by 99,000m litres from 2003-8. Also, that energy drinks here, though currently just 1% of volume, yielding 5% in value terms.
“Health and the environment are key,” he explained, “with a reassurance of integrity, your markets can grow even more buoyantly.”
Keynote speaker Peter Unsworth of Tata Beverage Group also underlined a perception of health and the reassurance of integrity being key to success.
“Thirst is still an unrecognised issue for many,” he said, with 40% of the UK population mistaking the thirst trigger for hunger. “So, the loyal, refreshed yet dehydrated consumer needs motivating reasons and bundles of consumer satisfaction to ensure purchase.”
Looking recently at carbon footprints, he queried the number of kettles boiled to make hot drinks and calculated this as being as great a value as the whole of the tea market on a global basis: “Just one email can destroy a brand, so we have to ensure compelling, new brand experiences time after time.”
Chris McCann of Walmart Global Procurement looked at ‘Changes that work – the environmental debate’.
“With 2.1m employees worldwide, you can forget just how big this company is,” he said. “Here, reductions in refrigerator gas leaks and fewer road miles through backhauling have a dramatic impact. By 2012, around 95% of our suppliers will have to meet Walmart standards. For instance, we have set up a Gang Master Licensing Authority to ensure the safety of supplier workers. We’re protecting both people and planet, and we’re all able to turn sustainability into a business driver, but a time will come when the low-hanging fruit will no longer be there and then it will be interesting to see what happens.”
The morning ended with three suppliers demonstrating how they’re at the cutting edge of innovation. Panos Giannopoulos, ICM marketing director of Frigoglass. Dr Timm Carr for Closure Systems International and Bericap’s Volker Spiesmacher on high-performing lightweight closures.
The afternoon session featured Sidney Coffeng, senior vice president for marketing, R&D and communications with Eckes Granini GmbH speaking on industry consolidation. “We’re a performance society and a network economy with status anxiety rife,” he said. “For small and medium size companies, the best way forward is to join forces.”
Scott Henderson’s presentation on 5-Hour Energy shots went down well. The ‘small package with a big punch’ is now selling 25m bottles a month: “This is function not hydration, and it sells like candy, right by the till,” he said. “We aim for consumers aged 24-49 who are willing to pay for efficacy. This isn’t cheap at $2.99 a pop. In 2008, we added extra energy, and grape and pomegranate variants. This is high velocity, high volume, high profitability. We paid $150,000 for counter placement and it worked.”
Yet, there’s no scientific backing: “It’s our name, it’s not a claim,” added Henderson. “This is FDA-approved and regulated. It works on brain chemistry, with almost instant energy and no crash later. We’re looking to go international and believe we can double volume over the next 3-4 years. These are application shots. When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you that you’re nuts. There are now 140 brands of energy shot on the market. When we started, we knew we had to do something different to cola or energy drinks.”
Harry Drnec, known for launching Red Bull in the UK, then spoke on Suso – bringing sparkling juice with attitude to young teens aged 12-16. Social networking and savvy targeting through music and fashion is key.
“Consumers can’t tell you the next big thing until they see it,” said Drnec. “You have to build a passion. Packaging, POS, pricing – it’s who you are. 15 years ago, I inherited a brand in a parlous state. We’d lost £7,500m and were picking up more product than we sold. Our best marketing site was the pump nozzle on petrol forecourts; a sticker saying ‘Do not drink if you want to sleep’. That was 80% less marketing spend and it worked.
“Suso is for the young, bored, unconfident and connected. It has been approved for sale in schools and we’re forging connections with ‘Susology’ and the phrase ‘No can’t do’. From brand building to habit building, it’s made with 100% English fruit, but this could be 100% German or French fruit, no problem.”
Winners of last year’s Beverage Innovation Awards, Andrew Gibb spoke on behalf of Preshafruit. It tastes amazing – every apple variant having an individual taste, and delivered in modern, triangular bottles. It’s the 165-day shelf life that wins favour with Australian retailers, and that’s thanks to the barometric pressure by which it’s filled.
What’s next for Preshafruit? Pouches for foodservice and a wider international audience for something, which has to be tasted to be believed.
Speaking out for women worldwide, Shannon Reagan-Henry (featured in Beverage Innovation this month, spoke on a fantastic-looking range of drinks for women – Gem – fronted by Marie Osmond.
“We believe in womankind,” she enthused. “38m women in the US are aged 45-60 and 82% have hot flushes and night sweats. Women control 85-95% of all household spending, and by 2013 there will be 90m women in the workforce. There are 10m more women on the internet each day than men, so the products – Lean on Me (for bone health), Keep it Cool (for menopause relief), C’mon Focus (for mental acuity), Let it Go (for stress relief) and Lookin’ Good (for anti-ageing), are all sold online.”
The evening was spent viewing Istanbul’s summer palaces from a gala dinner cruise on the Bosphorus, including the Ortaköy Mosque and Beylerbeyi Palace.
Had presentations in two camps. ‘Health through Nature and through Science’. Joost Verrest of Chiquita spoke of smoothies as the “ultimate fresh convenience food”, with growth in snacking on-the-go evident among Dutch consumers.
Chiquita is launching Fruit Bars at train stations and in high-traffic areas. Another location innovation is to site the ready-to-drink product among the fruit in supermarkets, making it easy for consumers to make a healthy choice.
Danny Rubenstein and Janet Di Giovanna from Dash Advisors have worked with many big names, including Naked Juice and Gerber. “We’re agents for change,” they explained. “Too many companies have tonnes of outdated research, when in fact the consumer has moved on. Today’s mother, for instance, is very different from those a few years ago.
“Shelf standout is vital, as most consumers spend just 2.5 seconds finding a product on-shelf. Targeting smaller, powerful groups through social networking is vital, and we predict growth in botanicals and florals in food and drink.”
The most popular presentation was by German entrepreneur Josefine Staats for Kulau GmbH and Coconut Water. High in potassium and low in calories, it’s inherently anti-ageing. Favoured by many celebrities (including Madonna), this is “a sports drink without the chemicals”, she said.
“I was financed by the big F’s – ‘friends, fools and family’!” she added. “We’re giving away 150,000 coconuts on our ‘Real Nuts’ summer promotion tour this year, and are franchising as well as producing coconut oil and beauty milk offshoots.”
She had her husband and eight-week-old baby in tow. It transpired in the Q&A session that followed that such new products can be trialled on Amazon’s ‘Vine’ for $1,200 by 1,200 people – a relatively inexpensive form of market research. “You have to have the stomach for it”, we heard – they’re asked to assess a product and, boy, will they tell you what they think!
I took to the stand myself as editor of Beverage Innovation and director of FoodBev Media, presenting a snapshot of innovations worldwide under the ‘Health through Science’ theme, covering energy and relaxation shots, digestive and brain health drinks and an assessment of regulatory challenges and a look at future potential.
Peter Bianchi, founder and CEO of Innovative Beverage Group Holdings with Drank, spoke about the breakthrough of relaxation drinks in the US and the move to Europe, linking in with music events and celebrities such as Stephen Baldwin.
Michael Oredsson, CEO of Probi in Sweden, was the most sought after delegate following his presentation on probiotic fruit drinks, including Goodbelly and Bravo Friscus, clinically proven to shorten the duration of the common cold.
The first of the briefing workshops was by Fiona Page on ‘Sustainable Sourcing’, explaining how we can no longer have “business as usual”, with climate change impacting on the lives of growers worldwide and an ever more natural basis for many of our products.
“There’s competition for land and land use, political bargaining over agriculture and water supplies,” she said. “We see oil selling for $150 a barrel, population growth and a collapsing ecosystem, with worsening equity for the world’s workers. Performance and purpose is at the back of our minds as we strive to create a better tomorrow for future generations. Obesity and waste are laid at the doors of those in the food and drink industry, and we’re working with Rainforest Alliance, FSC, Sedex and environmental suppliers in outreach worldwide to improve things. Switch off a light in a plant and you’re starting to save money and improve your carbon footprint. It starts with you.
“Who is your cheap deal at the expense of?” she added, saying how the new social media looks for authenticity and a new transformational environment.
Peter Milsted of Pure Circle spoke about the fantastic set-up of his organisation in China, Paraguay, Kenya, Thailand, Peru, Vietnam, Columbia and South Africa in the production of stevia – high purity Reb A for natural sweetening of food and drink products.
One batch can sweeten 26,000,000 cans of soda. The resulting leaf mulch is used to produce electricity, and one acre of stevia apparently equals three acres of sugar. Stevia also uses 75% less water to produce than sugar.
The removal of HFCS (high-fructose corn syrup) from drinks will help to reduce obesity worldwide. There are 300m clinically obese adults, and a billion who are overweight. Proving the purity of Reb A is extremely difficult, and although expensive to some right now, the costs are coming down all the time as more companies choose to use it.
Hansen’s Natural, Dean’s, Frucor, SoBe and Vitaminwater are using it (to name a few), with the best taste profile achieved when blended with sugar.
Zenith International’s Charles Phillips concluded the event with a roundup of ‘Global Soft Drink Trends’: “The emerging middle class of developing countries are big consumers of branded goods, with over a billion of these under the age of 25. Healthy refreshment and ethical positioning are key, with product design ever more important. Flavoured and functional water is likely to grow by 10% by 2013. Carbonates and sports drinks will also grow, with functional energy and water plus drinks seeing the greatest rises.
“Energy is seeing some decline in value, with an explosion of ‘me too’ products. However, energy drinks are replacing coffee as the older person’s beverage of choice. Shot drinks (energy and relaxation) are currently very small outside the US, but have the potential to be a 1bn+ market.”
And so concludes a fascinating few days, with so many insights – too many to mention here. But I hope you’ve enjoyed a taster of the industry in the spotlight, highlighting hopes and ambitions for manufacturers and suppliers across the globe.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024