Watching thousands of immaculate® cans coming off the pristine production line at Contract Bottlers Glasgow Ltd (CBG) is deeply satisfying and it’s all thanks to Ron Young and his team.

One of the many challenges for start-up drinks businesses is being able to actually get your product onto a canning or bottling line. Finding canners who handle short runs can be difficult because so many commercial canning facilities are geared towards large-scale production.  Their minimum order quantity (MOQ) is invariably too high for small businesses like immaculate®, who want to produce a limited number of cans.

We were lucky to hear about CBG and from the initial meeting, it was clear that we had found a business that could help us. They had the same innovative, can-do approach as the immaculate® team, the industry knowledge that we needed, and state of the art facilities geared up for small producers.

Ron Young co-founded CBG in 2019 with business partner Adrian Louden, and he brings a wealth of drinks industry, canning and bottling expertise to the table. He describes the business as “an “enabler” for small producers to access bigger customers and markets. CBG’s bottling and canning facility, based in Cumbernauld, gives small producers access to services that are usually only available to larger producers.  This includes everything from product development and pasteurisation to compounding, in-line carbonation, filling, labelling and packing.

Key to making it all work is flexibility. As Ron says, “The answer is yes. What’s the question?” In the fast-moving drinks industry, small producers are constantly developing innovative new products to meet evolving customer demand, and this is where CBG come in. Their flexible, supportive approach allows small producers to get access to the canning and bottling facilities they need to get to market.

Ron and his team also brought a lot of added-value to the table, in terms of their knowledge and advice about the industry, their ability to be flexible and quick to respond to our changing needs and timelines – plus they introduced us to the digital printing experts NOMOQ, who have supplied the stunning immaculate® cans. You can read more about them here.