Flow Beverage Corp. and BioSteel Sports Inc. have entered into a manufacturing agreement whereby Flow will manufacture and package BIOSTEEL-branded sport hydration beverages in the Tetra Prisma® format. Flow has been a manufacturer of BIOSTEEL-branded beverages since 2020. On December 1, 2023, BioSteel Sports, a recently incorporated company controlled by Dan Crosby, acquired from DC Holdings LTD certain assets that were previously owned by BioSteel Sports Nutrition Inc.
The Agreement has a term of three years, with commitments from BioSteel Sports to purchase minimum annual volumes (the “Minimum Annual Volumes”) which equate to approximately $19.3 million in revenue over the Term. Additionally, the Agreement has a take-or-pay provision requiring that BioSteel Sports pay Flow the equivalent of 80 % of the value of the difference between the applicable Minimum Annual Volume and the actual volume purchased during the relevant 12-month period over the Term. The Agreement provides for the committed purchase of 12 million units within the first 4 months of the Agreement, 1,062,500 averaged minimum committed purchases of packs per month for the remainder of current calendar year, and a cumulative minimum production of 24,000,000 packs for each subsequent calendar year under the Term.
Leading soft drinks business, Britvic, is announcing a further £13 million investment into a fifth canning line at its Rugby factory.
Based on the Glebe Farm Industrial Estate, the investment is expected to create up to 20 new jobs across engineering and manufacturing, as well as providing Britvic’s apprentices with an opportunity to take up full-time positions in the business.
The announcement is part of c.£40 million worth of investment into the factory over the past two years and takes the site into the top five largest soft drinks manufacturing sites in Europe.
Paul Graham, Britvic Managing Director in Great Britain, commented: “This investment is another example of our commitment to our people, product and planet goals.
“Developing our state-of-the-art supply chain means that we can increase the production capacity of peoples’ favourite brands, create more jobs and improve efficiency helping to reduce waste. We look forward to seeing the new canning line in action!”
These investments follow Britvic’s broader c.£250m business continuity plan investment in its British supply chain, which was completed in November 2019 and reflects the Group’s ongoing commitment to the continuous improvement of its operations.
The new set-up will see capacity increase by 14 %, producing 80,000 recyclable 330 ml cans per hour of some of the UK’s favourite brands including Tango and Pepsi MAX. The first cans are expected to hit shelves in the next few weeks.
The announcement follows the £27 million canning line investment in the factory in 2021 and £19 million to upgrade Britvic’s national distribution centre last year.
The Sunshine Coast’s reputation as a food and beverage hub is being cemented by the Morrison Government with $ 33.4 million for an Aussie-first manufacturing precinct at Sunshine Coast Airport.
Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor announced support for the $ 112.8 million Turbine Collaborative Food and Beverage Manufacturing Precinct under the Collaboration Stream of the Morrison Government’s $ 1.3 billion Modern Manufacturing Initiative.
The precinct will be home to local food and beverage companies that will be able to utilise shared warehousing and logistics, an education and training centre, as well as a collaborative high-tech manufacturing facility.
It will bring together beverage company Lyre’s Spirit Co, the Queensland Drinks Accelerator and ingredients company Doehler Australia, with the Food and Agribusiness Network and University of the Sunshine Coast.
By having all the facilities under one roof, it will help drive the competitiveness of local companies by collaborating together and building further capability. Once complete, it will be Australia’s leading industry-based food and beverage research and commercialisation facility.
By teaming up with the University of the Sunshine Coast, the precinct’s first-of-its-kind embedded training centre will also help the next generation take the next step to their future roles in areas such food science, transport & logistics, and hospitality.
It’s expected the project will see 131 new jobs during construction and support 687 once operational with $ 200 million in economic benefits.
Minister Taylor said the Sunshine Coast is home to incredibly innovative manufacturers especially when it comes to amazing food and beverage products.
“Food and beverage manufacturing is the largest manufacturing sector for the Australian economy. One in four people employed in manufacturing are employed in our food and beverage sector and it contributes $ 27.5 billion to our economy,” Minister Taylor said.
“This funding will support some of the most innovative producers leverage technology to increase their production, while meeting growing export demand and creating new local jobs across the region and beyond through this world-class airport precinct.
“Not only does it remove barriers to businesses getting started, it will also help companies build their capabilities together and drive growth in the food and beverage sector on a scale not yet seen in Australia.”
The strategic partnership rapidly expands Beliv’s footprint in the US; new probiotic innovation makes a splash
Beliv, Latin America’s fastest-growing bev-tech company with 40 brands in 35 countries, announced that it has completed the acquisition of Big Easy, a leading manufacturer of all-natural, plant-powered probiotic drinks in the US.
The transaction rapidly expands Beliv’s footprint in the US market and reinforces its commitment to bring exciting new products in high-growth beverage categories to consumers worldwide. Big Easy’s line of wellness-focused drinks will be the first probiotic products in Beliv’s portfolio.
With a manufacturing facility in New Orleans (LA, USA), Big Easy and its approximately 50 employees have built a winning culture centered around innovation, successfully bringing to market trend-forward, easy-to-enjoy beverages with digestive health benefits, including kombucha, functional juice shots, and tepache, a prebiotic pineapple soda with pre-Hispanic roots, which recently debuted in a new 12-oz can in Publix.
“Innovation is key to market growth and to meeting new expectations of consumers across the globe. By adding Big Easy into Beliv’s portfolio, we magnify the strengths and entrepreneurial spirit of both companies to respond to the intense demand for authentic, natural, and sustainable products that focus on functionality, well-being, and nutrition,” said Carlos Sluman, CEO, founder, and partner of Beliv.
Launched in 2014 by Austin Sherman and Alexis Korman, Big Easy delivers authentically crafted drinks with gut-health and immune-supporting benefits to customers who shop at over 3,000 retail accounts and growing in the US, including Publix, Sprouts, Wegman’s, and others. The founders will continue in active roles driving the company’s mission and innovations forward.
“Going big is about to get easy,” says Big Easy founder and CEO Austin Sherman. “We’re fired up to join the diverse and dynamic family of brands at Beliv and see our beverages reach new consumers internationally. Contemplating our brand’s humble origins making one bottle of kombucha at time, the opportunity to bring our products to the world is a dream realized. With access to Beliv’s infrastructure and resources, and new markets to dominate together, we’re confident this partnership will speed our mutual growth.”
Purpose built and designed with significantly more capacity, efficiency and data harvesting to drive growth
Treatt, an ingredients manufacturer and solutions provider to the global flavour, fragrance and consumer goods markets, has partnered with Siemens Digital Industries (DI) to build a world class digital manufacturing facility at its £41m new global headquarters.
Treatt’s purpose-built site in Bury St Edmunds replaces the existing complex in the town which has served as the company’s headquarters since 1971.
The new facility will bring together, under one roof, over 200 people in its science led distillation, manufacturing, logistics, technical and office-based functions in a once in a generation relocation upgrade to provide the scalable platform for further growth.
The factory will be controlled by Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 system which will offer Treatt more data, flexibility, scalability, availability, safety, and security in its production process.
Crucially it will automate its entire production process, enabling Treatt to increase efficiency and productivity, consistency, reliability, throughput, and repeatability.
The new factory is built and designed to have significantly more operational capacity in an optimally designed production space.
Mark Higham, General Manager, Process Automation, Siemens DI, said, “It is important for us to work very closely with Treatt to ensure we deliver the best solutions for their new headquarters.”
Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 distributed control system is a flexible and scalable platform which addresses the wide-ranging needs of the process industries. It has an open system architecture covering the entire production process ensuring the efficient interaction of all automation components in the factory.
Higham added, “Considering that Treatt is bringing all its functions of distillation, manufacturing and logistics operations under one roof then SIMATIC PCS 7 was a perfect fit.”
Some of the features of SIMATIC PCS 7 are its consistent approach to data management, the application of global standards, powerful and compact hardware and proven software libraries. These common features minimise the engineering overheads, reduce costs, shorten time to market and increase the flexibility of the plant.
Daemmon Reeve, Group CEO of Treatt said “As a science led innovator of ingredients designed to enable our customers to differentiate in the marketplace, we are excited to work with Siemens to drive a wide range of benefits into our world class manufacturing business.”
“Treatt sources a wide range of natural raw materials from supply partners around the world. As expected, nature provides variation in flavour profile from season to season and our job is to ensure consistency in the wide-ranging extracts we create for customers through complex distillation and extraction processes, so their beverages have the critical consistency in flavour profile.”
Treatt has a bespoke and dedicated analysis system which is now aligned and fully integrated with the Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 system to capture the results and data for future use as the company drives into further areas of digitalisation for the business.
In addition, Siemens has won a three-year service contract to support the new production facility.
Bruce Sinclair, Engineering & Site Services Manager, Treatt commented “The three-year service support contract is necessary as our operations team will be reliant on the new control systems for increased and efficient productivity. It is essential for us that maintenance of the new systems remain at a high standard set by the suppliers of the technology for longevity and competence.”
Siemens has already begun providing support with upskilling Treatt’s employees to use the new systems and their instrumentation engineer has completed a two-week training course at a Siemens site.
“Moving to the new site will be beneficial for our operation and our customers will see very clearly how our science led, customer partnership model is transforming Treatt into a crucial partner for those customers wanting true authenticity in natural extracts to enable them to win, that is what motivates us” says Reeve.
Higham, added, “I am delighted that our projects team are partnering with Treatt to deliver this advanced control system which will provide the backbone for their production processes and support their digitalisation journey.
“With digitalisation, we help manufacturers become more agile, and provide tools for reducing operations costs whilst increasing efficiency and reducing time to market. In addition, our fully integrated safety and security concepts ascertain a safe production environment for employees and the facilities where they are deployed.”
Siemens has teamed up with a fully certified Process Instrumentation Approved Partner for the deployment of the full range of its instrumentation portfolio across all lines of production at the plant.
Jon Tayler, Director at Process Instrument Sales Ltd, commented: “Our strategy for Treatt was to provide a technically correct and commercially effective solution for the instrumentation requirements of the demanding process systems, whilst ensuring efficiencies, safe working practices and environmental criteria.
“Our long-standing relationship with Treatt, as their approved partner, meant that we are able to be an essential element of the Total Integrated Solution that Siemens promotes for seamless process control and monitoring, which is what the engineering team at Treatt have set out to achieve.”
As well as its UK operation Treatt has a manufacturing site in the USA and a sales office in China, with a network of agents throughout the world.
DDW, The Color House, is pleased to announce that on June 28, 2019 it completed a transaction to acquire the DuPont Natural Colors business which was part of DuPont’s Nutrition & Biosciences division. The acquisition expands DDW’s global reach and adds technical and manufacturing capabilities in several core natural colors.
DDW adds two DuPont manufacturing facilities (Burton-on-Trent, UK and Santiago, Chile) and all related customer contracts. The expanded business will operate under the “DDW, The Color House” brand. DuPont originally acquired the business in 2017 as part of their acquisition of FMC’s Health & Nutrition business.
“This is the perfect opportunity to expand our portfolio with unique new products and deepen our position in blending and emulsions. The associates at both sites are very experienced and will ensure that we can continue to provide outstanding products and services during the transition,” explains Ted Nixon, CEO of DDW.
