Industry Innovators 2022: How Britvic is reinventing sustainable hydration with Beyond the Bottle

Hydration is paramount to our health, but sustainable hydration is paramount to our environment. The EPA estimates over 69% of plastic container and packaging waste in the United States is landfilled, leaving the recycling rate of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) soft drink and water bottles staggeringly low. To combat this environmental challenge, many beverage businesses are working with governments to drive up waste collection rates and improve recycling volumes. They also seek to either reduce the amount of plastic they use in their bottles, or look for recyclable and biodegradable solutions. Britvic is doing all these things and more.

As well as simply repurposing plastic bottles, Britvic is taking plastic out of the equation entirely. The UK-based drink company is tapping into a different strategy: driving plastic reuse beyond the bottle.

To share his experience and how Beyond the Bottle is bringing innovation to sustainable hydration, we invited Noel Dickson, Product Director of Beyond the Bottle at Britvic to speak at this year’s AWS Industry Innovators: Retail & CPG virtual event. In his presentation, “Disrupting the water market by moving beyond the bottle,” Dickson discusses how Britvic’s Aqua Libra Co was able to “reinvent hydration for good” by building on AWS. In this post, we recount moments from Dickson’s presentation, highlighting the ways Beyond the Bottle is aiming to revolutionize hydration.

Prior to Britvic, Dickson worked in a variety of commercial, operational, and technology leadership roles. Now, he leads the proposition development and delivery of sustainable digital innovation as product director of Beyond the Bottle at Britvic. In his position, Dickson develops in-house capabilities, drives customer engagement, and works closely with trusted technology partners.

All eyes on Aqua Libra Co

Britvic’s Beyond the bottle brand Aqua Libra Co started in 2009 as The Boiling Tap Company, which was then acquired by Britvic in 2020. As part of the integration process, Britvic relaunched the brand as the Aqua Libra Co in March 2021, and brought Britvic’s Beyond the Bottle initiative to life.

Simultaneously, Aqua Libra Co worked with AWS to develop a sustainable and data-connected tap. Together, the team went from idea and prototype to final device, refining ways they could use key cloud technologies to develop a viable commercial model and excellent consumer experience. Reimagining how people get hydration in workplaces, travel, retail, and other settings, Aqua Libra Co’s corporate tap targets hydration reuse and refill, offering a wide range of high capacity, energy efficient water dispensers.

Knowing there had been minimal innovation around corporate taps for the last decade, Dickson wanted to explore two things with Aqua Libra Co: getting into the corporate tap space and opening up the dispense proposition. After pulling together a successful prototype with AWS, Aqua Libra Co made significant strides. Now, Aqua Libra Co has a product that addresses health, sustainability, and digital trends.

But Aqua Libra Co isn’t your average corporate tap. As Dickson explains, the design approach, from digital IoT strategy to liquid development, has all come from a different way of innovating. Collaborating with AWS, Britvic worked within the AWS framework, creating a feature-rich prototype built on AWS IoT Analytics and Amazon QuickSight in just four weeks. Building a prototype on AWS so quickly proved successful, with Dickson noting serious traction with Aqua Libra Co’s corporate tap product as the company moved into trials and commercializing in the market.

How did Aqua Libra Co make the corporate tap?

When crafting the corporate tap, Aqua Libra Co wasn’t focused on “building tech for tech’s sake.” The company was focused on building critical components of service for its customers. To make this happen, Aqua Libra Co knew it needed to keep things simple, and most importantly, leverage its data by building an IoT service and moving to serverless architecture.

By providing a range of insights into Aqua Libra Co, data was instrumental in giving teams access to insights such as consumption overtime, consumables usage, low levels of machine performance, and errors. With instant data, Aqua Libra could get an overall “hydration picture,” making it easier for Britvic to frame its product, bring improvements back to customers, and use local capabilities to focus on unique experiences in the workplace or other settings.

Additionally, AWS connected the Aqua Libra Co team with Green Custard, an AWS Partner based in the UK, to help design, build, and collaborate on the exact product Aqua Libra Co had intended to make – a product truly focused on the user experience.

Though Aqua Libra Co’s journey is far from over, Dickson makes it clear the company wouldn’t be where it is without the continued support and collaboration of AWS. Helping Aqua Libra with technical challenges and a complex user experience, AWS kept things simple, cost effective, and fast during the design process. Seeing the tap’s success in the market, Dickson stresses how eager Aqua Libra Co is to share more innovations with its customers and its consumers in the near future.

To read more about how Britvic is reinventing hydration for good, check out the Britvic case study and the blog post, “Britvic enables secure, touchless drink dispense using AWS IoT and serverless technologies.”

Interested in learning more about innovators in the world of AWS and what drives them to continue to redefine their industries? Register for the free on-demand content from Industry Innovators: Retail & CPG. Or if you’ve already registered, access the Britvic session here.