Beverage contract manufacturing: the tank, the format and a slot on the filler

The tank sets the batch and the batch sets your commitment

Blending happens in fixed vessels. Whatever the smallest suitable tank holds becomes your minimum production quantity, because a partial fill mixes poorly, sits above dead legs and cannot be dosed accurately. That constraint has nothing to do with your sales plan and does not relax because the brand is new. It compounds with the filling step too: blended liquid has to be packed promptly, so a batch exceeding what the line can fill inside the booked window turns into a storage and stability problem. Ask about vessel sizes and filler rate together, since the pair define your real entry commitment better than any quoted price.

Format picks the factory before the recipe does

Cans, glass, plastic, pouches, kegs and bag-in-box are different machines in different buildings, and few sites run more than a couple of them well. Carbonation, hot fill, aseptic filling and pasteurisation are similarly specialised, each imposing its own demands on the product. Choosing a format therefore narrows the field to a handful of candidates before quality, geography or price is discussed. A brand wanting several formats should expect several suppliers, several specifications and a shelf life that differs between them. That fragmentation is normal, and planning for it beats discovering it after the first format has launched.

Water, gas and the parts of the product the site owns

Beverage plants supply their own water, and its mineral composition, treatment and hardness affect taste, colour stability and how the product behaves through processing. The same applies to carbon dioxide and nitrogen. These inputs sit outside your specification and cannot be transferred elsewhere, which is one reason an identical recipe filled at two locations can be told apart in a tasting. Where water character genuinely matters, ask what treatment the site runs and whether it can be adjusted, and generate your reference sample there rather than in a laboratory. Skipping this leads to reformulating for the second supplier.

Line time is seasonal, and it was booked before you called

Demand in drinks concentrates into predictable periods, and so does capacity. Sites fill their peak weeks well ahead with customers who commit early, so a new brand asking for summer volume in spring is asking for what has already been sold. Three consequences follow. Forecasts have to be issued further ahead than the business feels ready to commit to. Early booking is worth more than a price concession. And stock gets built before the season rather than during it. Plants reward predictability, and the brands that get slots are the ones whose numbers turn out to be broadly true.

Duty, warehousing and who is registered for what

For alcoholic products the site's excise status determines a great deal: whether goods can be held in suspense, where the duty point falls, who accounts for it, and what paperwork travels with the pallet. This affects cash flow rather than quality, and it catches brands who assumed duty became payable on sale. Related questions arise over who holds the premises licence, whose name appears as the responsible food business, and which party is registered with the relevant authority. Settle all of it before production, because attaching a registration retrospectively to stock already made is awkward and sometimes impossible.

Frequently asked questions

Can one site fill both our canned and bottled versions?

Some can; most cannot do both well. Each format has its own filler, closure system and handling, and a site running one as a sideline usually charges for slow speeds and higher losses. Where both formats matter to the range, plan for two suppliers and accept that the product will need separate specifications, separate shelf-life evidence and possibly small recipe differences. Forcing one site to cover both generally costs more than running two relationships properly.

Why does our drink taste different when filled at a second site?

Water is the usual answer, process the next. Mineral content and treatment vary between locations, and a beverage is mostly water. Beyond that, differences in mixing, carbonation level, thermal treatment, headspace oxygen and the time between blending and filling all leave a trace. Matching two sites means treating the second as a fresh development exercise with its own trials and its own approved reference, rather than assuming the written specification will carry across intact.

Who accounts for excise duty when another company fills our beer?

That depends on the registration under which goods are held and where the duty point falls, which turns on the site's authorisations and your own rather than on who owns the liquid. Some brands stay outside the duty system entirely by selling from the filler's warehouse under its registration; others register in their own right to control release timing. Settle the arrangement with an adviser before the first run, since it shapes pricing, cash flow and record keeping.