Bespoke functional drink manufacturing

Private label drinks in cans, bottles, concentrates and mixes

Functional and private label drinks for premium wellness brands are developed and made at our Leicester facility, which is ISO 9001, HACCP and GMP certified by BSI, alongside the other supplement formats we manufacture. We make still and sparkling ready-to-drink formulas in cans and bottles, concentrates, and the same formulas as drink mixes: energy, calm, gut health, hydration, protein and alcohol-free botanical drinks, with every active dosed to its label claim. Shots sit with our liquid supplement and shot manufacturing, and powdered versions with our powder and drink mix manufacturing. Every batch is released with its certificate of analysis. Your formula is yours.

In Worldpanel by Numerator's January 2026 grocery data, 11% of UK households bought functional drinks and spending rose 13% on a year earlier, at nearly four times the cost per litre of typical soft drinks.

Dose follows the claim. In the UK and EU, a drink is a source of a vitamin or mineral, and can carry its health claims, at 7.5% of the nutrient reference value per 100 ml: for vitamin C, 6 mg per 100 ml against the 80 mg reference. Caffeine dose sets the warnings: the European Food Safety Authority found that single doses of up to 200 mg, and up to 400 mg a day, raise no safety concerns for healthy adults other than pregnant women (EFSA, 2015).

What works in a drink, from caffeine to spore-forming cultures

Hydration drinks build on our electrolyte supplement manufacturing, and gut health sodas on our gut health supplement manufacturing. Coffee and tea drinks have their own rules, covered under functional coffee and tea manufacturing. Energy drinks, with their caffeine statements and age rules, are covered under energy drink manufacturing.

Acid, heat or preservatives: how each drink is kept stable

Water, pH and the preservation route

FDA notes that most foods have a water activity above 0.95, enough to support bacteria, yeasts and moulds, and a drink sits close to 1.0 (FDA Inspection Technical Guide 39). Preservation therefore comes from hurdles: acidity, heat, preservatives, carbonation, the pack and storage. Clostridium botulinum does not grow at pH 4.6 or below, the line US acidified food rules use, so we formulate acidic drinks well under it. Shelf-stable low-acid drinks, such as milk-based protein drinks, need a sterilising process, such as retort or UHT with aseptic filling. US drinks containing juice also follow FDA's juice HACCP rules.

Carbonation and preservatives

Carbon dioxide dissolves more readily in cold liquid and forms carbonic acid, which lowers pH, sharpens flavour and holds back moulds. Benzoates and ascorbic acid together can form trace benzene, and heat and light speed the reaction (FDA questions and answers on benzene in beverages), so a vitamin C drink takes a sorbate system or a heat step instead.

Vitamins and minerals in water

Vitamin C reacts with dissolved oxygen, faster with copper, iron, light and heat, and it speeds the breakdown of vitamin B12. A vitamin drink therefore needs low dissolved oxygen, a light-blocking pack and overages set from stability data. EU tolerance guidance expects vitamins in a food to stay between 35% below and 50% above the declared value throughout shelf life, against 20% below for supplements, with a higher upper tolerance for vitamin C in liquids (European Commission, 2012); US rules require added vitamins and minerals at 100% of the declared amount or more. Calcium and magnesium salts can haze, and iron darkens drinks that carry tea or fruit polyphenols.

Sweetening below the sugar levy

We design functional drinks below the sugar levy threshold, so taste rests on high-intensity sweeteners: FDA rates sucralose at about 600 times as sweet as sugar and steviol glycosides at 200 to 400 times, each with its own aftertaste. Allulose is not authorised in GB or the EU as of October 2026, so a US recipe built on it needs reworking for Europe. Caffeine, magnesium and botanicals add bitterness at full dose, and our flavour and taste masking work balances sweeteners, acids and flavours.

Fibre and protein

In an acidic drink, heat and time break inulin and FOS down into fructose and glucose, which lowers the fibre you can declare and raises the sugars, so we choose fibres for acid stability and confirm them through shelf life. Clear protein drinks use whey isolate in an acidic base, where it stays in solution; foam and astringency are the challenges.

From blind tasting panels to a filled, sealed drink

Development comes first. Bench samples are judged by blind tasting panels for sweetness, acidity, aftertaste and fizz; the lead recipe goes into stability in its final pack, tracking vitamins, caffeine, colour, flavour and carbonation; and a pilot run proves the process and its critical limits before routine production. Each stage leaves a record your brand keeps.

We make every drink in Leicester. The steps below are the process a functional drink needs, and our HACCP study for each product type, reviewed annually, sets its critical control points.

1. Approve and receive. Every material comes from a supplier approved before first use and reviewed each year, with its certificate of analysis checked against our specification.
2. Prepare and weigh. Process water is prepared and checked, and materials are weighed against the batch record under our allergen management plan with yellow colour coding.
3. Dissolve and blend. Gums and fibres hydrate first, then the other ingredients follow in a set order, with checks of Brix, pH and acidity.
4. Preserve. The route follows pH and pack: hot fill, pasteurisation in the pack, a preservative system with cold fill, or sterilisation for low-acid drinks. Time and temperature are critical limits, recorded for every batch.
5. Carbonate, fill and seal. Sparkling drinks are carbonated chilled, and the run is checked for fill volume, can seam or closure integrity, headspace oxygen and tamper evidence.
6. Label and verify. Label verification on every batch is our critical control point, CCP-01: right text, batch code and best-before date.
7. Retain and release. We keep three retained samples per batch for shelf life plus one year, and quality control releases every batch against its specification.

A full mock recall, forward and backward with mass balance, runs in seconds. The first production batch is checked against the pilot on pH, Brix, colour, carbonation and taste before release, so the drink you approved is the drink that reaches the shelf.

Tests for caffeine, spoilage organisms and carbonation

Every batch is tested by accredited partner laboratories (ISO/IEC 17025), and batch testing is part of every order. Nothing is dispatched without quality control sign-off. Our testing and batch release page explains each method.

With every order you receive a certificate of analysis for each batch and its batch release confirmation. Development adds the formula, the specification, a process summary with its critical limits, stability data, the nutrition declaration and a label and claims review for each market.

Our credentials: ISO 9001, HACCP and GMP certified by BSI, and FDA registered. BRCGS implementation under way, certification expected in early 2027.

Cans, glass, PET or cartons, and the rules on deposits and caps

The pack is part of the preservation system. Cans block light and oxygen and hold carbonation; glass is inert and suits hot-filled drinks; PET is light, with barrier grades for oxygen-sensitive formulas; cartons suit aseptic low-acid drinks. We match the can lining or bottle grade to the drink's acidity and actives, choose closures that hold carbonation and show tamper evidence, and confirm the choice in stability, tracking carbonation, colour, flavour and vitamins in the final pack through shelf life. Every unit carries its batch code and best before date.

Two rules shape drink packs, as of October 2026:

• UK deposit return: from October 2027, PET bottles and steel and aluminium cans from 150 ml to 3 litres join deposit return schemes in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.
• EU plastics: caps on single-use plastic drink containers up to 3 litres must stay attached, and PET drink bottles must average at least 25% recycled plastic, rising to 30% for all plastic drink bottles from 2030.

Most functional drinks are foods, and that changes the label

The rules below are as of October 2026.

Food or food supplement?

A functional drink is usually a food, not a food supplement. UK and EU food supplements come in dose form, such as capsules, sachets or ampoules of liquid, so a shot can be a supplement while a can is a fortified food. That changes the label: no "food supplement" statements, a nutrition declaration per 100 ml and vitamin and mineral forms from the list for foods. Vitamins and minerals may not be added to drinks above 1.2% alcohol, and those drinks cannot carry health claims.

United Kingdom

Drinks above 150 mg of caffeine per litre, other than coffee and tea drinks named as such, carry "High caffeine content. Not recommended for children or pregnant or breast-feeding women" in the same field of vision as the name, with caffeine in mg per 100 ml. The Soft Drinks Industry Levy applies to drinks with added sugar from 5 g of total sugar per 100 ml; it is due to change in 2028 under draft legislation, so we design new recipes below the planned 4.5 g threshold. Under DHSC guidance, "alcohol-free" means 0.05% alcohol or less.

European Union

The same caffeine statement applies across the EU, and Poland bans sales of drinks with over 150 mg of added caffeine per litre, or added taurine, to under-18s, in schools and from vending machines. L-theanine and Bacillus coagulans are novel in EU foods other than food supplements, so we build EU calm and gut sodas sold as foods on other actives. Ireland's food safety authority regards "prebiotic" as a health claim, and no prebiotic claim is authorised.

United States

FDA guidance treats a product called a drink, water or soda, or sold for refreshment, as a conventional food. Its ingredients must be generally recognised as safe (GRAS) or approved food additives, the label carries Nutrition Facts, and structure/function claims derive from nutritive value, with no notification or disclaimer. FDA has answered several L-theanine GRAS notices with no questions, and its GRAS listing for caffeine covers cola-type drinks at up to 0.02%, about 200 mg per litre. We are an FDA registered food facility for dietary supplements. For a US drink sold as a food, we add the matching food categories to our registration before the first order, and for a shelf-stable acidified or low-acid drink we also register as a food canning establishment and file its scheduled process.

We use authorised claims only, with their conditions. "Vitamin B12 contributes to the reduction of tiredness and fatigue" needs the drink to be a source of the vitamin; "Magnesium contributes to normal psychological function" suits calm drinks; and the carbohydrate-electrolyte claims need set carbohydrate, sodium and osmolality levels. Caffeine and L-theanine have no authorised claims. We track these rules on our supplement regulation watch. Research and development is a paid stage that can be included with an order of the right size. When your drink is ready to brief, Start your project.

References: Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011 on food information to consumers (2011); Regulation (EC) No 1925/2006 on the addition of vitamins and minerals to foods (2006); Directive 2002/46/EC on food supplements (2002); HMRC, Changes to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (2026); EFSA, Scientific opinion on the safety of caffeine (2015); FDA, Distinguishing Liquid Dietary Supplements from Beverages (2014); 21 CFR Parts 101, 108, 113, 114 and 120 (2026); Directive (EU) 2019/904 on single-use plastics (2019).