SupplierSide

Typhoo Tea enhances capacity to supply tea to U.S. retailers

Typhoo Tea Ltd., Moreton, Merseyside County, England, a supplier of private label hot beverages to supermarket chains in Europe and the United States, said it added 23 tea bag machines to its Kenyan factory in Mombasa. It installed the new machines not only to manage increasing product demands, but also to increase its competitive manufacturing edge with U.S. retailers.

“This new additional capacity in our Kenyan factory gives us a chance to offer U.S. retailers a serious and cost-competitive alternative to their private label tea needs,” said Rahul Kale, director of international business, Typhoo Tea.

With the new machines, Typhoo Tea said it is now the largest European private label tea packer. Each new machine is capable of producing 200 string, tag and envelope tea bags per minute. Its BRC-, HACCP- and ISO 9000-certified African operations will now have total capacity to pack 12,000 tons of black and green tea and herbal teas annually, and the company as a whole is now capable of packing 45,000 tons of tea into tea bags annually — approximately 3.5 billion tea bags.

Typhoo Tea said it is capable of packing several formats of tea packaging, including square and round tea bags, double-chamber tea bags with or without envelope, catering tea bags, loose tea in caddies and aluminum foil pouches, and pyramid tea bags. With its new machinery, Typhoo Tea can help retailers launch more new products, variety and assortment packs, as several flavors and teas can be packed simultaneously.

LiDestri adds high-acid aseptic beverage lines to plant

Fairport, N.Y.-based LiDestri Food and Beverage said it partnered with Tetra Pak Inc., Denton, Texas, to install two high-acid, ambient-fill aseptic beverage machinery lines in its Pennsauken, Pa., manufacturing plant. The lines are the only of their kind in a high-acid beverage plant in the United States. The private label supplier said it would eventually expand operations to four lines and then to eight.

The state-of-the-art equipment uses an A3 platform, specifically the A3/Flex line and the A3/Compact Flex line, LiDestri told Store Brands during a plant tour in October. The A3/ Flex line can fill package sizes from 0.5 liter to 2 liters, while the A3/Compact Flex line can change filling sizes from 80 milliliters to 375 milliliters, perfect for portion-control packaging.

Additionally, the A3/Flex line can run single 1-liter packages or can create bundles of two or three packages. And the A3/Flex line can run 117 packages per minute, or about 7,000 packages per hour. The A3/Compact Flex line can run single 330 mL packages or create bundles of four or six packages and can run 150 packages per minute, or about 9,000 packages per hour, LiDestri said. The Tetra Prisma Aseptic 330 mL size is fitted with a DreamCap, a cap designed to suit facial geometry and optimum control of beverage flow.

During the tour, LiDestri said the aseptic packaging lines could benefit retailers’ store brand beverage programs. For example, the beverages are heat treated in a HTST system (High Temperature, Short Time), helping to preserve flavor. The aseptic package also ships more efficiently, due to its cubed design, and is not as fragile as plastic or glass. In addition, the graphics can be printed directly onto the paperboard that will become the package. The package is sealed before the cap is added, too, which prevents seal integrity issues with the cap.

LiDestri said beverages packaged in Tetra Pak packaging typically have a one-year shelf life, without any preservatives. In contrast, a typical cold-fill PET beverage has a 70-day shelf life with added preservatives.

Additionally, traditional PET packaging lines require a lot of warehouse space to house the empty plastic bottles before they are filled with the beverage. However, one 4-foot-by-4-foot-by-4-foot roll of paper-stock packaging for the Tetra Pak machines holds 20,000 1-liter individual packages. That is the equivalent of 45,000 16-ounce PET bottles, or half a tractor trailer. And from a cost perspective, a Tetra Pak aseptic package can be roughly one-half to one-third cheaper than a PET package, LiDestri explained.