PETpla.net Insider 03 / 2017

BOTTLING / FILLING PET planet Insider Vol. 18 No. 03/17 www.petpla.net 11 Nescafé, the instant coffee brand of nutrition company Nestlé. He went on to create the Tenwow brand in 1996. In 20 years, sales have grown to over 700 million Euros. Five beverage plants Tenwow initially produced several RTD tea beverages in PET hot fill con- tainers using its first hot filling line at the main plant in Shanghai. Tenwow subsequently expanded the assortment to include an entire range of new products along with innovative taste variants. The com- pany also developed new container designs. To this end, it expanded its filling capacities and installed a second and third PET hot fill line in Wuhan and in the newly constructed operation in Putian. These were joined by two beverage carton filling lines at the Shanghai site. At the same time, widely spread production loca- tions helped facilitate the company’s distribution in this vast country. A further hot fill line was added in Chengdu in 2015. Subsequently, Tenwow began filling its natural min- eral water Tribute Spring Water at the Changxing location. Tenwow now operates five beverage plants dis- persed throughout China, and a sixth is planned for the north of the country near Beijing. Tea in summer, coffee in winter The year 2015 marked a turning point in the Tenwow filling philoso- phy and saw the company introduce aseptic filling of tea and coffee for the first time. Tenwow had pro- duced RTD coffee for the first time just three years previously. At that time, consumption of this unfamiliar beverage variant was still marginal Filling philosophy has changed: Aseptic instead of hot fill Tea or coffee? Both! Following the growth recorded over the past few years, Euromonitor International predicts further growth of around 1.5 billion litres in the market for RTD tea beverages in China between 2015 and 2019. The popular- ity of coffee among Chinese consum- ers is also set to increase. Although sales of RTD coffee beverages are still at a low level, growth rates are sig- nificantly higher: Euromonitor expects sales to double within five years. These figures are likely to have struck a chord with Tenwow as well. After all, the company has a good instinct for the market. Founder and Chairman Lin Jianhua established the food trading company Nanpu in 1991 in Shanghai. Lin Jianhua was also one of the first Chinese importers of While ready-to-drink (RTD) tea beverages are already firmly established on the Chinese beverage market, RTD coffee beverages are only beginning to take hold. Tenwow Interna- tional Holding distributes both products on the market. The company now wants to expand this segment further – while remaining true to a philosophy best conveyed by its slogan “from nature to love”. For this reason, Tenwow switched for the first time from the hot fill system to aseptic filling – with a high-performance PET Asept L2 line from Krones. Total consumption of ready-to-drink coffee and tea beverages (in million litres) Source: Euromonitor For Lu Ying, Vice President Tenwow International Holding, the benefits of aseptic filling compared with the hotfill process are obvious.