Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas (Laitila Beverages) supplies Rainbow ciders and long drinks
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Rami Aarikka, Director
Laitilan Wirvoitusjuomatehdas (Laitila Beverages)
1. Tell us about the Laitila beverage plant. Where is your operation and what do you make?
The Laitila beverage plant began operating in 1995 as a lemonade manufacturing and bottling factory in Laitila, Western Finland. These operations expanded to include ciders in 1997, and beer and long drinks in 2001. Our best-known brands are Kukko and Kievari beers, Oiva cider, Into long drink and Sitruuna-Sooda lemonade. The company has grown from a manually-operated workshop employing one person to a high-tech operation with a staff of nearly fifty employees that is now the second largest Finnish brewery. We are renowned not only for our great tasting products and a positive public profile, but also for our high production standards, as most recently indicated by our achievement in becoming the first Finnish brewery to earn ISO 22000 food safety certification. The company has always invested in environmentally friendly technology, for example by concluding a wind power agreement back in 2001. This agreement ensures that we only use wind-generated electricity at our plant.
2. What products do you supply to Inex?
You will find our Kievari and Kukko beers, Oiva ciders and Into long drinks in the Inex range, together with Wanhanajan and Herra Hakkaraisen lemonades. Our association with Inex includes the 2001 launch of Finland’s first private label ciders under the Rainbow brand. We also subsequently manufactured Rainbow long drinks.
3. How do you make Rainbow ciders?
Rainbow ciders are made from high quality raw materials. One very important factor ensuring the purity of our ciders is the use of slow fermenting champagne yeast. Unlike our competitors, we give our ciders plenty of time to ferment and mature into a wholesome product that is free of defective aromas. This is a time-consuming approach that also requires more fermentation capacity, but it results in a very high quality cider base. After fermenting for 4-5 weeks the cider base is strained through a membrane filter without using animal product brighteners. Sweeteners and preservatives are then added, and the product is sterile filtered once again. The filtered cider base is then fed into a mixer to adjust the bead and add the aromas required for the final product, which then passes to the cannery and warehouse
4. How is the partnership with Inex progressing?
Our collaboration with Inex has been very smooth. Working with the Inex staff has been an entirely pleasant experience, and I think the feeling is mutual. During our long-sustained partnership we have also jointly developed a sizeable number of successively better-tasting and more innovative Rainbow ciders and long drinks. Inex is an important partner for us, and we have therefore always done our utmost to remain flexible and dependable. With our operation growing at such a phenomenal rate for so many years we have naturally had to make numerous investments in equipment and facilities, and these changes have sometimes messed up our plans, but Inex has always remained highly flexible and has shown appreciation for our situation.