Slades Beverages, a family-owned business, has grown from a local soft drink manufacturer to a versatile producer of branded and contract beverages. Dae Hong writes.
George Tan recalled his early teenage years working during weekends at a rundown beverage facility – Slades Beverages – bought by his father in 2001.
“Back then, you only needed about five or six people to run the line,” he said. “We were turning on machines, running the line, packing boxes.”
Slades Beverages was founded in the 1850s as a small soft drink manufacturer. Owned by the Slades family for three generations, the company had maintained a diverse range of soft drinks reflecting its Italian and Greek heritage, including flavours such as Chinotto, Portello, and Sarsaparilla, which catered for the northern side of Melbourne.
Competing with the likes of Gold Medal Soft Drinks and Lloyd Soft Drinks, Tan said there were only a few soft drink operators, with Slades being one of the larger businesses. Part of its success came from its home delivery business in Victoria, with weekly deliveries from more than 200 drivers.
However, when Tan’s father took over, the delivery side of the business was struggling.
“My father had to find other channels to sell,” said Tan. “He decided to preserve the origin of the brand.”
With more than 30 flavours, Tan’s father decided to expand into the kids’ range, which was launched into canteens for healthier soft drink options. While this strategy proved successful, there was another problem.
“The factory was really old, rundown, and terrible,” said Tan. “I remember as a kid going onto the production floor that was sticky and smelly. The whole thing was a bit of a nightmare.”
The Slades facility was large but outdated, with roughly 25,000 square metres of production space. With a background in palm oil manufacturing in Malaysia, Tan described his father’s determination to turn things around. Taking advantage of the large space, he extended the factory away from the old site and built the company’s first PET line.
This upgrade was one of many, allowing the company to increase output and quality while establishing the foundation for another avenue – contract manufacturing.
Co-manufacturing with beverage packaging
Today, Slades Beverages has two facilities. The main facility is in Thomastown, which is 18,000 square metres and has three production lines. The other facility is in Ballarat, which is 10,000 square metres with its own natural spring water source and has a production line with room to grow.
Leading the company as managing director, Tan said the company operates multiple beverage brands and offers contract manufacturing services, demonstrating agility and foresight in a competitive market.
“Co-manufacturing was a much larger market, probably bigger than what we were doing with the Slades brand,” said Tan.
Tan said the barriers to entry in the beverage market are high, driven by set up costs for a facility, equipment, and warehousing. The company’s expansion and diversification have been tied to strategic investments in manufacturing. With upgrades, brands that lacked manufacturing capacity began to reach out for partnerships to enter the drink category, specifically around packaging.
A key part of Slades Beverages’ competitive edge lies in its investment in packaging technology. Tan emphasised that packaging is often the largest cost component for beverage products.
“It’s not the liquid that costs the customers. It’s the packaging, the caps and bottles, that costs the most,” he said.
At the time, there were not many packaging suppliers. Brands would have to either buy blown bottles or preforms, both of which were expensive. According to Tan, the company was making minimal margin and decided to lower costs in this supply chain by bringing packaging in-house.
“We’ve invested in a blow moulding bottle plant to compete in the market,” said Tan.
This plant includes an injection moulding system. Slades Beverages procures its own raw PET material and produces the preforms in-house. These preforms are then fed into a blow filler, allowing them to be shaped into bottles ranging from 300 millilitres to two litres.
“The filler will blow the preform into whatever shape, which will then be instantly filled and sealed,” said Tan. “We produce the syrup on-site and manage everything from start to end.”
By producing preforms in-house and integrating blow-fill technology, the company has reduced costs while improving efficiency. This approach has enabled Slades Beverages to support smaller brands and startups, providing access to equipment, suppliers, and manufacturing expertise that might otherwise be prohibitively expensive.
Just Water
With these equipment and facility advancements, the company currently co-manufactures for brands including private label drinks for ALDI, Frucor Suntory, Nexba, Ocean Spray, and a variety of plant-based beverage brands, including Minor Figures’ oat milk.
While the company is well known for its co-manufacturing capabilities and PET production, Slades Beverages launched its own water brand – Just Water – in 2019, packaged in a recyclable paper carton format. The company uses the Cottonwood Springs site, a subsidiary of Slades Beverages, as a primary natural spring water source and production facility.
This innovation marked a shift away from conventional PET and glass packaging, offering an environmentally friendly option.
“We are always looking at the next generation of packaging materials,” said Tan. “Part of our business expansion into Just Water and the paper bottle format was to reduce PET plastic in our environment.”
Using the same packaging format with the production line in Ballarat, the company has expanded into plant-based milk, juices, liquid stock, and more. Tan said that moving away from plastic and building self-sufficient facilities were key steps towards being plastic free by 2030. The Cottonwood Springs plant reflects this vision.
“Building our Cottonwood plant in 2021 was to have the building energy self-sufficient, and we are 90 per cent there in achieving it,” he said. “As we are in a regional area, being able to self-sustain and lowering the impact on the environment is key to our sustainability goal.”
Returning to the family business
Tan said his life could have been different. Studying finance in San Francisco and gaining experience in the US, he had the choice to remain and pursue a career there.
“I love beverages. I have always been passionate about drinks,” he said. “There was always a hunger to come back and join the family business.”
Part of that passion includes the growth of beverage startups and brands. Slades Beverages offers a platform for smaller brands to enter the market, providing end-to-end solutions that include supplier management, manufacturing, and packaging. This model has fostered an ecosystem where emerging brands can innovate and grow.
“In the last four years, more than 10 brands have been launched through our support,” said Tan. “Some of the challenges the industry faces can be overcome with partnerships with businesses like Slades.”
Looking ahead, Slades Beverages continues to explore new opportunities. The company remains attentive to global trends in health, sustainability, and functional beverages, seeking to anticipate consumer demands.
For example, Tan advises both partners and startups to take risks in green developments and focus on healthier options for consumers, highlighting the functional and healthier beverage categories as areas of strong growth and opportunity.
“That’s the category that we see growing,” said Tan. “This approach will allow consumers to have better and healthier choices on the grocery shelves.”
While Slades Beverages has already diversified and modernised its operations, the next phase focuses on continuous improvement. This includes extending the plant-based range and refining packaging technology. With the ability to export to other countries, its profile extends to Japan, Korea, the US, Singapore, and China.
From its origins as a soft drink manufacturer serving Victoria’s home delivery market, the company has evolved into a multifaceted producer, supporting its own brands and those of clients.