Tag Archives: Food & Drink Manufacturing

Kocktail Cocktails Newcastle

Cocktail specialist shakes up the sector

A cocktail brand born out of the pandemic has unveiled ambitious plans for the future, after selling over 200,000 units in just two years.

Nestled in a converted railway arch in Newcastle city centre, Kocktail was set up in 2020 to help people enjoy ‘world-class cocktails in the comfort of their own home.’

The brainchild of friends Andrew Hutchinson, Emil Stickland and Neil Donachie, the trio launched the business after struggling to replicate their favourite cocktails at home during the pandemic.

Neil – who was head bartender at The Savoy when it was crowned ‘The World’s Best Hotel Bar’ – was tasked with teaching the others how to recreate their favourite cocktails, however they soon realised there was a gap in the market for high-end cocktail kits and ingredients. 

This inspired the launch of Kocktail, a cocktail subscription service providing eight ‘world-class, ready to drink’ cocktails a month to customers across the UK, produced with the most sought-after spirits and quality ingredients.

Fast-forward two years and the company has grown rapidly, establishing itself as the UK’s leading cocktail kit and subscription brand and employing 15 people. It has also signed deals to supply its new 500ml bottles to high-end retailers across the UK, including John Lewis.

“A lot of people said it would just be a lockdown fad and predicted that demand would fall off a cliff when restrictions were lifted, but we were confident that wasn’t the case,” Andrew said. “And we’ve been proven right.

“We added individual products and gift boxes to our range, giving us three core product ranges, and this has really helped elevate the business to heights even we didn’t envisage, selling over 200,000 bottles and securing deals with some of the biggest names in retail.”

One of the challenges facing the business during its growth phase however, aside from the pandemic, was ensuring the products remained of the highest possible standard while demand and its team spiralled.

After attending a series of workshops by the £10.9million Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing (SAM) Project at the University of Sunderland, the company introduced processes to ramp up productivity while standardising best practice and making it easier for new staff to understand the process.

This proved key to helping the company meet the increased demand from its clients and Andrew is confident that the increased output generated by the improvements will help the company to continue growing as it plans for the future.

He explained: “Due to Neil’s impressive bar background, he had really high standards which was what really set us apart from our competitors and the support from SAM was key to ensuring our production manager, George, was able to maintain this standard as more people joined the team and we began to really ramp up our output.

“As we continued to grow, we knew we had to keep standards high and make sure we were meeting them every single time, without being too mechanicalised or mass produced, and the support from SAM really helped us achieve that.

“It saw us standardise practices and helped us better understand how to implement procedures. We were already doing some of those things naturally, but they managed to put it onto paper so that everyone now sings from the same hymn sheet when they join the company. It’s really helped sustain our future and formalise aspects of the business we would never have done ourselves.

“As we look to the future, the plan is to continue expanding our presence across the UK, expand our product range and continue growing the business, and I’m confident that, with the support we have received and the team we have assembled, we have everything we need to achieve our goals.”

The Sustainable Advanced Manufacturing (SAM) Project is a £10.9m collaboration between the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the University of Sunderland and the Northern Powerhouse Initiative and Industry, supporting SME manufacturers in the North-East Local Enterprise Partnership (NE LEP) area to improve their products or processes and introduce new technology.

Roger O’Brien, Project and Technical Lead at the SAM Project, said: “It’s been fantastic working with the team at Kocktail to help improve their manufacturing processes and prepare for the future.

“Our manufacturing workshops are ideal for busy companies to learn best practice techniques and we are delighted at how much we are able to support at such a business-critical time.”

Vision system helps packaging manufacturer freshen up its act

A fast-growing food packaging manufacturer is the latest business to box clever and benefit from the SAM Project’s electronics and industry 4.0 support.

The experts at SAM recently worked with a North East packaging specialist to help the company understand how electronics technology could improve product quality and eliminate manual visual checks which was adversely affecting their manufacturing line.

After visiting our state-of-the-art test factory at the University of Sunderland, the company – which supplies packaging to a major blue-chip client – was able to trial technologies such as Portable Monitoring Systems and a Vision Systems to understand how they could benefit their production process.

The goal was to eliminate faulty ‘black-spots’ items from its assembly line of transparent packaging, with the end-goal of increasing product quality and output, making the company’s operations more sustainable and profitable.

Working with Richard Eynon, SAM’s Industry 4.0 and Electronics Specialist, the company was able to achieve its goals after being introduced to a Vision System (Balluff), which helped it meet the ever-increasing requirements for maximum quality and greater flexibility within modern production plants.

This new quality checking process – through the implementation of a Vision System – has since resulted in the company eliminating almost every transparent container with inclusions from its production lines.

Richard said: “Each and every company that engages with the SAM Project has a unique challenge, be it improving quality, reducing lead-times or slashing costs and this client was no different”.

“Working with a blue-chip client, the company has to ensure the products it supplies meet the most stringent of standards, placing a huge strain on the company’s quality control teams and leading to heavy lead-times during periods of heavy production”.

“However, after sitting down with the company, we were able to identify how a Vision System was able to detect an issue and subsequently identify faulty products which could be eliminated from the production line using its digital ports (air, paddle…)

“Not only did this take the strain away from the quality control teams but it also helped the company improve product quality by reducing the number of products that could potentially be identified further down the line”.

“As engineers, we love a challenge and we love working with the latest technology, so this was a great project that really got our brains ticking.”

The company has also taken on additional resources as a result of the support it received from Richard and the SAM team and is confident that it is now on track to record zero detectable failures across its entire operation.