Md of Crawley-based WaterWerkz Adam Green, whose previous career includes spells in chemistry, renewable energies and publishing, got the idea for the PouchLink system after seeing street vendors in India selling water in plastic bags. He says the system offers a more efficient, eco-friendly and cost-effective method of vending soft drinks than “traditional” vending machines. After leaving a City job he founded WaterWerkz with colleagues including Steven Jenkins, who has 27 years' vending experience, Ballygowan Spring Water founder Geoff Read, and hardware and software designer Steve Douglas.
In the past three years the team has worked with several project partners, including top vending machine manufacturer, Vendo Sanden, out-of-home drinks dispense specialist IMI Cornelius, and several pouchmakers, to perfect what Green believes is the world's first drinks vending system able to mix and fill drinks on-demand in the machine using a combination of mains-supplied filtered water, bag-in box concentrates, and spouted and capped flexible pouches supplied on the reel delivered via a micro-pneumatic pouch handling system.
Manufactured to WaterWerkz's own design, the micro-pneumatic module is currently supplied to Vendo Sanden's Italian factory for incorporation into a new vending machine, the PouchLink PL1.
Green elaborates: “Perfecting the interconnected pouch system (dubbed PouchLink and now patented) at the system's heart required extensive r&d; we believe the system is a world first.”
When the user selects their drink the micro-pneumatic system detaches a pouch, mixes water with a syrup or fruit concentrate, and then fills and caps the pouch before dispensing. WaterWerkz says the reduction in transportation of bulk water content means the new drinks will boast the lowest “food mile” of any vended packaged cold drink currently available. As pouches can be supplied in continuous chains of several thousand, re-loading times are also substantially cut.”
PostPack (WaterWerkz's own name for systems using its patented PouchLink pouches) units can hold 2,000 pouches of various capacities. Interest has been “phenomenal” - among the first users to trial the system in the next three months will be Nestlé, for a new fruit juice, Jusante, and UK adult soft drinks manufacturer, Bottlegreen Drinks, for four post-mix fruit cordials in 300ml pouches.
Bottlegreen Drinks are currently sold mainly in glass, but Giuliano Mai, national account manager, says: “The PouchLink system is set to revolutionise the market, and we are delighted to be linking up with them to provide premium, soft drinks to a wider audience.”
Green says: “Our aim now is to get out into the market and identify the many other drinks producers we believe can benefit from this exciting new packaging and dispensing system.”
WaterWerkz is also exploring the development of a standalone packaging system with German pouch machine manufacturer Hensen Packaging Concept.
The company adds: “The PouchLink system brings high volume pouch filling's benefits to smaller operators currently disadvantaged by the high capital expenditure and labour costs entailed in post-filling smaller volumes of spouted flexible pouches."
Contact details
WaterWerkz
T: +44 (0)1293 459880
