Older drinkers
Mobility and longevity
Functional ingredients that sit behind joint health, bone density and physical endurance. The taste has to read as a drink, not as something out of a chemist.
Beverage flavours, developed in Southport
Drinks for Australia and New Zealand,
made here.
VKA Australia has spent 23 years on the ground here developing beverage flavours for the food and drink makers across the Tasman. The bench, the application kitchen and the manufacturing plant all sit at one Southport site, which is why a sample lands days, not months, after the brief.
The brief, in plain terms
Drinks earn their place at the table.
The beverage category has shifted. Aussie and Kiwi drinkers across every age group now read the label and weigh function alongside taste. Health span, the number of years lived in good health, has become the metric people quietly buy on.
Lower sugar. Lower alcohol. Free from anything that does not need to be there. These are no longer niche preferences for new product launches across Australia and New Zealand.
Drinkers, not demographics
Different ages, different briefs.
Each group brings a specific functional ask. Our flavourists work that ask into the first sample, not into a second round.
Middle-aged drinkers
Cognitive performance
Nootropic and adaptogen-forward formulations. Focus, memory, mental clarity, delivered in formats people actually want to drink at three in the afternoon.
Gen Z drinkers
Fatigue and stress
Energy without the crash. Calm without drowsiness. This group reads the ingredient list and walks away from anything that reads as artificial.
What we work on at the bench
Three capabilities, one Southport bench.
Botanicals for function. Natural colours for shelf pull. Sugar reduction for the drinker who is reading the back of the bottle. Together they cover most of what a modern beverage brief asks for.
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Botanicals
We work across beverage applications. VKA's portfolio runs to hundreds of botanicals that sit behind gut, bone and cognitive health, sleep quality and stress, sourced through the group's flavour-house network.
Each botanical is sourced, standardised and tested for stability in a liquid system. We carry the formulation work so you get a clean label and a consistent taste from one batch to the next.
02
Natural colours
Colour drives the first reach for the bottle. Drinkers want a vibrant glass and a clean back-of-pack at the same time. Our natural colour range is built to do both.
Stable across acidic pH ranges, resistant to light, compatible with the preservative systems used in mainstream Australian and New Zealand drinks.
See the colour portfolio03
Sugar reduction
Drinkers want less sugar. They do not want less drink. Our sugar reduction work holds the sweetness curve, the mouthfeel and the flavour release at thirty to fifty per cent reduced sugar.
We work with natural sweetener blends and flavour modulators. The result tastes like the original, not like a diet version.
Sugar reduction workBring us a brief
Send us your beverage brief.
Tell us the format, the drinker you have in mind and what the brief has to do. We will read it inside one Australian business day, sit with our flavourists, and come back with a sample. No contract to start.
Read in one Australian business day. No contract to start.