What comes to your mind when people mention drinks from Taiwan? Boba tea? That is for sure delicious and famous, but if you only know about Boba tea from Taiwan, you are missing the big treasure in here.
We have recently completed a project in Beverage filling OEM sourcing from Taiwan. As usual, it will surprise you that the well-known drinks/brands are manufactured in Taiwan for decades. Those manufacturers in Taiwan all have one thing in common- which is that they started as small manufacturers of lid/bottle.
However as the RTD (ready-to-drink/bottled drinks) market got more mature, they innovated the technology in manufacturing and finally become certified suppliers to those big players such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, 7.Up.
So, what is beverage filling?
Beverage filling means the process of filling processed ingredients (fluid) into bottles before they are packed. Beverage filling process contains two major procedures. First part will be ingredient processing, which means to processed the raw ingredients, sterilize, then turn them into fluid. Second part will be filling the processed fluid into containers, it could be either glass or plastic bottle (PP/PET bottle). That explains that a beverage filling manufacturer must be able to process raw ingredients, to sterilize the manufacturing process, to fill into the containers and finish the packing.
There are two sterilization methods in the process. Different methods of process play important roles on favors, costs and bottle design.
- Hot Filling: it applies ultra heat treatment (UHT) to sterilize the processed fluid and fluid is filled into bottles when it’s still hot (>70C). Bottles will be left aside for a while to sterilize microbiological around the lids, afterwards, cooling process will be conducted before packing.
- Aseptic Filling (cold filling): UHT is used in the beginning of the process as well, but it applies temperature lowering process to lower the temperature to 25-30C. Meanwhile, hermetic sealing with a sterilized closure in a manner that prevents viable microbiological recontamination of the sterile product. The benefits of aseptic processing over conventional canning include longer shelf life, wider packaging sizes, wider container materials and improved nutritional and sensory properties. [PACKAGING | Aseptic Filling
it’s easy to summarize that Aseptic filling costs more in terms of equipment, quality check procedures, also the benefits in flavors and shield life. While Aseptic filling has renovated the beverage filling industry, it’s also costly and has higher MOQ compared to conventional hot filling. During our survey, the standard MOQ for Aseptic filling beverage is around 150,000 cases, while hot filling beverage is around 3000 cases. Apparently, Aseptic filling has become big player’s exclusive weapon to compete in the market.
Beverage production market growth in Taiwan
This is an overview of beverage production in Taiwan, unlike other industries, the data shows that the production index has been stable over the past 10 years except for 2008-2009 (Recession). Given the unique characteristics of beverage production, buyers normally form a long-term and solid relationship with manufacturers. They work together more like partners and intend to sign at least 10-year of contract to secure the productions. Buyers do not change manufacturers easily because there is confidential information involved such as, recipes and cost. In our research, we’ve found out that Taiwanese manufacturers even build ‘in-house’ production lines in buyer’s factories to shorten the lead time of productions, and it also helps each party to respond quickly in case of quality issue during production. We again admire the flexibility Taiwanese manufacturers are capable of doing, at the same time, the trust between buyers and manufacturers have been established strongly to accomplish the mutual goal.
What drinks are manufactured in Taiwan?
Taiwan has a number of manufacturers who have been doing this for many decades. Their clients are well-known internationally, such as Coca-Cola, Pecos. For example, Coca-Cola’s aseptic filling drinks, UCC coffee and Itoen tea from Japan are all manufactured by Hon-Chuan Group in Taichung, Taiwan. Here are some examples,
What are the challenges? What have we achieved in this project?
When we first started working on this project, we faced the biggest challenges on meeting the MOQ given by manufacturers. Beverage filling OEM is a very mature field with a lot of capital invested upfront, buyers must be able to invest money on MOQ to get started. Our client is a startup company, we were appointed to lower the MOQ barrier and negotiate reasonable prices to match client’s expectation. After a few weeks of research, we have successfully targeted a few manufacturers and convinced them to take our client’s project with lower MOQ and reasonable prices. We are very delighted to have assisted our client to overcome the biggest barrier to their startup business. Meanwhile, we are helping them to test different samples provided by manufacturers and coordinate project delivery in the process.
What have we learned?
- MOQ can destroy your dream– we have learned that MOQ is clients first and biggest challenge when they plan to manufacture their own beverages. Some may choose not to automate the process and do filling on their own, which is not ideal because it may violate the law to sell drinks without sterilization process. It could lead to a lawsuit if consumers drink unsterilized bottles and get sick.
- Legitimation of ingredients and mutually agreed flavors– Even if we have resolved the MOQ issue, here come the next challenges: legitimate ingredients and mutually agreed flavors. Most of clients request to manufacture with their recipes or ‘secret ingredients’, when it comes to the point, two factors are involved.
Q1: Are your own ingredients allowed in the manufacturer’s country?
We must understand and discuss with manufacturers to evaluate if it’s possible to import the ingredients to process in the country. Take Taiwan as an example, to import food/ingredients to Taiwan, we must make sure the ingredients are approved by Food and Drug Administration(FDA). If the ingredients are not allowed to be imported, it’s time to discuss an alternative solution with the manufacturers.
Q2: Flavor adjustment- it’s absolutely subjective.
Once we settle the recipe and have had all the ingredients ready, here comes the flavor adjustment. We all have different tastes towards smell/flavors, when it comes to the ‘perfect flavor’, everyone has their own opinion. In that case, it’s totally necessary for clients to have face-to-face discussion with manufacturers to find out what works out the best. A few pilot runs could be necessary to gather useful feedback, more importantly, communication is the key to the good result.
Having an agent to address all the possible issues beforehand is critical to the success of projects.
We are truly grateful to have known the potential of Taiwanese beverage makers, and glad that we are able to find suppliers to assist our client.
Are you interested in manufacturing your beverage in Taiwan? Talk to us now!
References:
- Bottle filling machine market
- Beverage production index in Taiwan 2008-2019
- Ready to Drink Market Research Reports & Industry Analysis
- PACKAGING | Aseptic Filling
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