Amber Beverage Group plans ready-to-drink products

Luxembourg-based Amber Beverage Group is set to enter the ready-to-drink category with canned variants for Moskovskaya Vodka and herbal liqueur Riga Black Balsam.

Amber Beverage Group (ABG) will produce ready-to-drink (RTD) products for its Riga Black Balsam bitters brand, Moskovskaya Vodka and sparkling wine Cosmopolitan Diva. The Riga Black Balsam RTD will launch this autumn while the other products are set to launch later this year.

“The first RTD project has already been approved; in the autumn we plan to start filling RTD cocktails for the world’s oldest bitter brand – Riga Black Balsam,” said Pepijn Janssens, ABG’s chief marketing officer.

“There is also an active process of developing new products in cans, introducing the iconic vodka brand Moskovskaya Vodka’s hard seltzers and Cosmopolitan Diva’s sparkling fruit infusions, with a lower alcohol content or ABV.”

The new RTDs will be created as the firm resumes can filling at its production facility in Riga, Latvia. The site has also been upgraded with new equipment and improved canning capabilities.

Janssens added: “After the purchase of new equipment and the adaptation of technological processes in one of our original production facilities, Latvijas Balzams, we have upgraded our canning capabilities to a higher specification.

“In July we reached an agreement to produce our first product on this filling line, a soft drink called Green Cola for one of our rapidly-recovering markets after the Covid-19 pandemic – the Baltic states.”

The RTD category was the fastest-growing alcohol category in 2019 due to the rise of hard seltzers, according to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis.