Quinn Glass rebrands filling division

One of the UK beverage industry’s major players has announced the relaunch of its specialist bottling division in order to satisfy increasing market demand for bulk filling services. Quinn glass, which has been a leading producer of container glass products for more than 14 years, has rebranded its bottling arm as ‘Cobevco’. The division will bottle beverages that are bulk imported into the UK – and produced domestically – on behalf of producers, importers and merchants from all over the world.

The launch of Cobevco underpins a £500 million investment by Quinn glass in its two purpose-built manufacturing plants in Northern Ireland and Cheshire. The Cheshire site, which provides a fully integrated supply chain solution including glass manufacture, bottling, bonded storage and onward distribution to the UK and Europe, will now be home to Cobevco’s bottling operation.

With five high speed Krones bottling lines, a GEA processing plant, a laboratory manned seven days a week and a fully-trained panel of tasters in-house, Cobevco’s 21,600 m2 bottling facility is capable of filling and packaging more than five million litres of wine, beer, cider, spirits and soft drinks per week. The plant is overseen by a highly experienced team of experts, several of whom have more than 40 years’ experience in areas such as oenology, beer brewing, chemistry and microbiology.

Commenting on the launch of the company, Adrian Curry, managing director at Cobevco, said: “As the beverage market becomes increasingly globalised, products need to travel larger distances to get to market, which can be costly. Overheads within the supply chain are also escalating because of rising fuel prices and duty fees. As a result, a growing number of producers are utilising bulk importing and bottling at destination as a more efficient and environmentally sound route to market. As a specialist bottling brand, Cobevco will meet this increased industry demand with a highly efficient and responsive combination of facilities and expertise – catering for importers and home producers alike.”

Cobevco has an ambitious growth strategy in place, with a further £3.5 million investment in its Cheshire plant planned for early 2013, to further improve its capacity. The specialist contract packer is also aiming to forge strong links with the Australian and Chilean wine industries, and is already predicting that it will have doubled its output volumes of wine and carbonated products by Q1 2014.

Adrian Curry continued: “By launching Cobevco, we have been able to bring our already significant bottling expertise together under one brand and make provisions for the increased demands of the drinks sector. We will now be providing the market with the most innovative bottling technologies available today and helping producers, importers and merchants to control costs and speed up the route to market, while crucially maintaining quality of product.”

5 November 2012 - Felicity Murray