Britvic Launches Sustainable Digital Flavour Taps Using AWS

The single-use plastic beverage bottle, long a detriment to the environment, has hung on due to its convenience. Britvic wants to help put an end to that as part of its Healthy People, Healthy Planet mission. 

An international soft drinks company that sells Aqua Libra, Fruit Shoot, Pepsi Max, Robinsons Squash, Rockstar, Tango, and other well-known brands to retail, food service, and leisure outlets, Britvic has created an innovative digital flavor tap using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Aimed at offices and retail environments, the tap reduces plastic bottle use by dispensing zero calorie flavored water into reusable containers, providing a more sustainable and healthy way to enjoy beverages.

Britvic’s Aqua Libra Flavour Tap sits on a cabinet-sized unit in office kitchens and retail shops. The distinctive, streamlined design includes a simple touchscreen interface that provides user with a selection of products and dispenses a finished drink in seconds.

Under the countertop, a high-tech cartridge powered by Internet of Things (IoT) technology releases micro-doses of sugar- and additive-free flavoring into the water. The digital interface, data analytics on flavor tap usage, and IoT capabilities all use AWS.

Britvic sees this as an opportunity to eliminate single-use plastic beverage containers and provide a way for consumers to drink fewer sugary drinks, thus making a positive impact on the environment and personal health. “With Aqua Libra, we’re offering a new proposition for customers to reduce their carbon footprint, while providing healthy hydration options for staff and shoppers,” says Scott MacKenzie, Beyond The Bottle proposition lead at Britvic. 

A few years ago, though, the digital flavor tap was just an idea. To prove its viability and win support for the project across the business, Britvic needed a prototype.

Through collaboration with AWS and working within the AWS framework, Britvic spun up a feature-rich prototype within 4 weeks that was built on AWS IoT Analytics and Amazon QuickSight. “AWS really gets what we’re trying to do. That belief and support has been important to the success of Aqua Libra,” says MacKenzie. “In particular, being able to build a prototype on AWS so quickly showed the rest of the business that we could bring this idea to life.”

Based on the prototype demo, the Aqua Libra Flavour Tap team got the thumbs-up to create a production-scale product. Throughout the development process, the ability to use AWS to analyze real-time data on the tap’s usage has helped Britvic generate insights that improve the product.

Tracking customer behavior led Britvic to provide recyclable cups alongside the flavour tap, as not all consumers carry refillable vessels, and to adjust the tap’s minimum container weight so a wide range of cups can be detected. By studying usage, Britvic also realized the amount of flavor added to the water varies by location, so it can tailor the flavor cartridges based on whether the flavor tap is in a workplace or retail outlet.

Collecting data on flavor tap usage has also helped Britvic customers to understand the needs of their employees and shoppers, and to gain insights that help them to work towards corporate sustainability and wellness goals. The Aqua Libra dashboards show its customers how many and what kinds of drinks are served, so they can determine whether the flavor tap is in the right location for maximum use and can encourage healthy habits such as drinking more frequently throughout the day.

Using AWS, the IoT sensors on the flavor tap’s flavor cartridges also simplify operations and maintenance, as they send out automatic alerts when a cartridge needs to be changed, or if it’s experiencing problems and requires attention. “We’re helping our customers fulfil their goals and help their employees or customers make better, healthier choices, for their bodies and for our planet,” says MacKenzie.

Britvic expects the Aqua Libra Flavour Tap will continue to evolve over the coming years, as it learns more about how customers and consumers want to interact with it.

Future features include auto-recognition of vessels—so the flavour tap would know a consumer’s usual order—and the ability to detect and stop spillage. Britvic also sees opportunities to move into other environments, such as education and health, and has plans to roll out the Aqua Libra Flavour Tap to 100 locations in the UK by next year, and to be international by 2023.

Using AWS supports these goals, as the on-demand, serverless model makes it easy to try out new services, release frequent updates, and scale up to accommodate rising demand.

It also helps Britvic to keep up with consumer expectations. “Our customers are more aware than ever of consumer expectations for tasty, healthy, and sustainable options,” says Dickson. “Our decades of experience with liquids and equipment combined with a priority to develop industry-leading experiences has led to the creation of the Aqua Libra Flavour Tap. While developing the ground-breaking product, AWS has supported our ability to innovate in-house.”