Ceepackaging

Investment

Sara Lee investing in tea

The company revealed that it was investing around €3m in its Budapest plant on new machinery to meet growing demand for more specialist teas in the country. It hopes to help drive this demand further with a new pyramid filter bag unique to the market.

According to the company, hot and instant teas rank fifth in the country’s non-alcoholic beverage market, in which Sara Lee - through its Pickwick tea brand – is currently market leader.

Despite dominating tea production in the country, Timea Bóné, PR manager for Sara Lee in Hungary revealed that the company were keen to increase their market share.

“The high-quality and carefully selected Pickwick Leafs tea, packaged with Fuso machines, is becoming very popular across Europe, and its filter version, in unique pyramid-shaped filters, is also highly demanded,” she said.

To meet this demand Bóné explained that they have needed to purchase new equipment to produce the special pyramid-shaped nylon filters for the product.

The equipment supplied by Fuso, will replace the traditional warm welding system of producing tea bags, with a new ultrasonic plastic welding method more tailored to the unique shape of the product.

The company added that the machines were capable of producing 80 filters per minute. Along with investments in it production methods, Sara Lee also announced it would also be upgrading it packaging operations to help push tea sales. New machines by Italian group IMA will be used to increase efficiency of its packaging and distribution.

As well as producing the groups filter bags, the machines will also be able to box the new products with or without envelopes as the specification demands.

Bóné added that as well as catering for growing demand for tea, the investments were also vital to Sara Lee’s success in the wider region.

“The new machines in the factory in Budapest are needed to satisfy the growing demand in Hungary, neighbouring countries, and in Spain to meet the special manufacturing requirements of the new Pickwick Leafs tea,” she said.

The investments come as part of a wider €19m revamp off the groups operations in Hungary over the last 10 years.