Five million bottle milestone for Mojo
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Image source: PKN
The kombucha health drink category has seen lift off in the last year, taking organic brand MOJO Crafted with it and leading to plant expansion for the brand owner.
Just under ten years ago, South Australian company Organic & Raw took a chance on a new beverage category that was seeing strong uptake in the US market at the time. The product was kombucha, a lightly sparkling beverage made from fermented tea that is claimed to supports good gut health and assist protein utilisation.
This week, the company announced it had hit the5-million-bottle production milestone, with a large part of that volume coming through in the past year.
“In the last twelve months, with the growing movement away from high sugar soft drinks, kombucha has come into its own in the Australian market,” Andrew Buttery, business development manager for kombucha brand MOJO Crafted, told Food & Drink Business.
This has led to rapid growth for the business, which has expanded the sales team and doubled distribution year on year.
“We're running double shifts and next up we’re investing $500 000 to increase bottling line capacity, fermentation capacity and blending tanks,” Buttery said.
The company is working with beverage equipment supplier FB*PROPAK to develop the new bottling line.
Project engineer at FB*PROPAK, Robert Ciampa, explained that FB*PROPAK originally supplied a custom bottling line for Mojo, which allowed the company to increase production efficiency as demand increased.
“Now that they have grown we are looking to improve on what we started by providing a second line that is able to produce up to 2500 bottles per hour of kombucha,” Ciampa told Food & Drink Business.
“The new semi-automatic line will include a labeller, rinser, filler and capper, specifically designed to meet the requirements for their unique product.
“Being able to run both the original and second line will give them more flexibility going forward in meeting the demands of their different SKUs,” Ciampa said.
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This article was written by Lindy Hughson at Food and Drink Business. Read the full article HERE