18i3_Tea_Report
Finlay to build at NAS Quonset Point
US
Finlay Extracts and Ingredients' announcement of a new $17 million R&D lab highlights several rapidly accelerating trends in the convergence of tea and flavored coffee. Finlay emphasizes its moves to vertical integration and its strengths from “bush to cup.”
The stated focus of the lab is to develop the next wave of food and drink extracts and ingredients. “Beverages that consumers haven’t yet imagined.”
Finlay built its tea business to become the largest tea company in the world in the 1970s. It still owns estates in Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Kenya but sold off its Indian gardens in the early 1980s. It maintains production plants in England.
Clearly, the lab investment that is expected to grow to $60 million is representative of trends toward new forms of integration: vertical in the tea business and laterally into other markets.
A trigger for the lab and choice of location was Finlay’s London parent firm acquiring Autocrat, the Rhode Island-based coffee extract and syrup producer that has been a leader in cold brew. The stated goal was to mesh Finlay in tea and Autocrat in coffee: “it made sense to bring the two fastest-growing categories in beverages together.”
The move to integration will be extended in the second phase of the lab: the addition of advanced manufacturing facilities. The innovations in flavors and beverages categories plus the U.S. FSMA (Food Safety Management Act) demand many new production, packaging, shipping and quality assurances innovations.
The site of the lab is a major decommissioned U.S. Navy facility in Quonset, Rhode Island, where Autocrat is based. The Quonset Business Park has excellent shipping and road/rail transport infrastructures and provides a strong U.S. base for the British firm.
R&d is not a term widely used in reference to tea: research, yes, product development, market development… The beverage r&d era seems likely to emerge rapidly.