Wright, who is director, global beverage market and EMEAI product management at the $3.8bn turnover firm, said that Xylem was noting a rising trend towards brands shipping wine and even beer in bag-in boxes rather than bottles or barrels.
Alongside this, he said that non-carbonated beverages (juices, wines, teas) were growing in popularity, but due to lack of carbonation could not power air pumps – the traditional method for pumping out of bag-in-box.
Thus, Xylem is developing a new range of electric beverage pumps – the second of which was launched at Brau Beviale 2012 – targeted at customers who desired an electric answer to bag-in-box.
“Bag in box is a very traditional system when you’re talking in terms of fountain dispense, talking colas, lemonades, all of these,” Wright said.
“It’s well-established, the savings you get from there, in distribution, in transport. But you’re also going to get better efficiency in bars,” he added.
“Naturally, other industries are starting to look at these technologies. So you do have the wine industry constantly pushing bag-in-box wine as a better alternative to dispensing out of bottles.
Dispensing systems could be made to look like a barrel at the front end of a bar, Wright said, while nice fonts (for instance those developed for Diageo brand Blossom Hill) were increasing acceptability.
Beer producers were also following this path, Wright said, due to simplicity of bag-in-box containers in terms of transport and the absence of the need for keg cleaning.