Britvic Innovates with IoT for Sustainable Drink Solutions

Every year, individuals consume over 100 litres per capita of soft drinks, fuelling an industry that garners revenues nearing US$84.2bn.

The creation, transportation and packaging linked to these beverages significantly impact the environment, especially when focusing on the disposal of single-use plastic bottles.

Britvic, a stalwart in the British beverage sector, is known for producing notable brands like PepsiCo, Tango and Aqua Libra. It has recently joined forces with Carlsberg Group in a deal to establish the new entity Carlsberg Britvic.

Smart sustainability efforts

In an eco-conscious collaboration with AWS and IoT solutions provider Wireless Logic, Britvic now introduces the innovative Aqua Libra Flavour Taps, which dispense soft drinks entirely devoid of packaging.

This partnership delves deep into IoT technologies to enable real-time data tracking.

“The really common sense view is why have more packaging than you need," said Malcolm McDermott, Britvic’s Brand Lead for Aqua Libra. “I think that a lot of this comes from new ways of consumers interacting with drinks. People are demanding more, for instance, out of what they get in the workplace. They are demanding higher quality sources of water when they're out and about. What can you do that takes advantage of the new trends, but also of new technologies in order to be able to deliver more of the drinks that people want when they're out and about in ways that don't just immediately jump to using the traditional packaging methods that you might have done.”

A deep dive into the Aqua Libra flavour tap system

The Aqua Libra Flavour Tap is an innovative digital dispenser that serves up delicious and ethically responsible Aqua Libra soft drinks without the need for any packaging.

Designed for use in offices, hospitality and retail settings, it allows consumers to refill reusable bottles with a variety of sugar-free, additive-free flavours like Cucumber, Mint & Lime and Raspberry & Peach.

Boasting a construction of recycled plastic and equipped with six flavour cartridges, each device promises a potential saving of up to 10,000 single-use bottles or cans before requiring a cartridge change.

Harnessing real-time data for eco-friendly innovations

The use of real-time data plays a critical role, yielding insights on consumption frequency, timing and flavour preferences.

“What has been really interesting is what we can do with that data to start to predict usage patterns or make it easier for us to deliver the consumables for our product,” continued Malcom. "We still use cartridges that are the equivalent of 2,000 traditional drinks in one cartridge, so there's a massive efficiency saving there. Being able to use the data to work out when we need to ship those to site and not having to rely on traditional supply chains allows us to use a variety of different methods like the post which makes us more reliable."

Armed with smart NFC-tracked cartridges, these devices enable enhanced end-of-life tracking and smarter supply chain interactions, adding layers of sustainability to the business model.

“It's also a smart cartridge and it's tracked by NFC. What that means is that we can actually start to track that at the end of life as well,” said Jack Drinkwater, Business Development Manager at Wireless Logic. “If you look at sustainability, there's a huge amount of work that's going on not just in the UK but globally to help drive a more sustainable world. There are more and more technologies coming to market really week by week, month by month that are helping to drive that change. Even things right through to environment sensors and monitoring, noise pollution, light pollution sensors – these types of different applications can really make a difference and impact global sustainability.”

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