Company address – Storefast Solutions Limited, Courtyard V, Springhead Industrial Est, Kent, DA11 8HN
Number of employees - 46
Size of site – 60,000 sq ft
Shift patterns – 5 days x 24 hours
Types of lines – Blending both aseptic and non-aseptic, canning, pouching and bag in box
Capacity and output– New canning line has a 90m can capacity
Storefast was originally set up in October 1987 by John and Sharon Kirby as a warehousing business specialising in juice.
Fast forward to 2025 and the business has seen a tremendous evolution from simply storage to multiple markets, including the establishment of Storefast Solutions in 2007.
Nick Kirby joined the family business the same year, taking on the helm of this new arm as the company grew and sought out new opportunities.
“The business was set up by my parents in the late 80s. At the time, there was limited capital available, so it was difficult to grow the business. I have very much watched the journey of a start-up and the hard work associated with that throughout my childhood,” Nick Kirby, now managing director for Storefast Solutions, recalled.
A very modern factory
“In 2007, after they’d already started making some in-roads into manufacturing in basic juice processing, they saw the opportunity to buy this modern food facility that we’re sat in today.”
The factory Kirby referenced is the c.80,000 sq ft plant in Northfleet, Kent which was set up to unlock the opportunities the Kirbys saw in specialised warehousing for food, alongside being a blending facility to service its existing customers.
“We had been working out of re-purposed agricultural buildings previously and we professionalised the approach in line with the increasing standards of the food industry at that time,” continued Kirby.
At the beginning, the business was servicing large factories which demanded goods were received in a simplified fashion (e.g. tankers, IBCs). However, Kirby noted when importing goods from around the world, the format they come in is incredibly varied. Moreover, factories want to limit the number of products they take in as much as possible.
“We saw a big opportunity in not only juice blends but more complicated products like juice compounds,” he continued. “Simplified singular ingredients that producers can plug into the front of their factory to give them increased efficiencies.”
Market diversification and expansion
Since then, the business has seen several more phases of growth with recent investments focused on capacity, speed and efficiency.
“Around 2019 the business had seen limited growth in the competitive juice blending and the compound markets. So we dipped our toe into finished goods manufacturing with a relatively minor investment into a bag and box filling machine,” explained Kirby.
Several of the services Storefast Solutions already offered lent themselves well to the ready-to-drink (RTD) soft drink and cocktail market.
“We saw fairly explosive growth with some machinery, which was probably a bit too small to produce it,” Kirby continued.
This led to an intense period of activity that promoted further investment into bag and box.
“We are seeing strong growth in bag and box, most specifically in restaurants and pubs,” said Kirby. “We’ve got a lot of customers that have a cocktail menu that want better consistency, better quality, [and] crucially, they can serve four cocktails in the space that they could normally do one.”
It also has the added benefit of avoiding the free pouring of expensive alcohol, with businesses able to control exactly how much it is going to cost per unit.
Around the same time, Storefast Solutions also started to see a movement towards more localised inventory services and demand for intermediary pre-bottling product manufacturing as a result of Brexit redtape.
“Inventory had to move to the UK because any blips in that supply chain had a much bigger impact, they couldn’t react to them so quickly,” Kirby explained. “I thought it may move back as that got smoothed out, but it hasn’t been the case.”
Whilst probably in the minority, the EU exit proved to be very lucrative for Storefast Solutions.
What has been challenging for the business has been managing the increasing complexity of the various stock it holds and to secure good staff to fulfil less automated roles.
To combat this, the business has installed a new racking system which will increase the capacity by 50%, but crucially give the business “massive picking efficiencies”, helping with the management of Storefast Solutions’ growing customer base and their various ingredient requirements.
Moreover, the business is also introducing a new manufacturing software platform to integrate its processes, with every function, from warehousing, to production, to HR, to accounting, consolidated into one platform.
The automation also extends to its new canning line, which will see its efficiencies increase significantly to cater for booming demand within the premium RTD market.
A can-do attitude
The canning line came as the business spied new opportunities in the market. After all, while bag and box still proves to be a key market area, it can’t be popped into a handbag!
“Canning has seen massive growth, be it in soft drinks, be it in functional drinks, be it in RTD. Consumers and companies demand canning, I think they believe it to be more sustainable than plastic,” Kirby said.
Indeed, just like wine in boxes and bags rather than bottles, the historical snobbery of drinking from cans seems to have dissipated.
Canned cocktails “have become a premium experience”, Kirby contended.
The business invested into canning as an influx of new equipment suppliers hit the market. Whilst canning use to be exclusively for mass production, equipment manufacturers began to make more affordable, smaller scale, portable lines, driven by the craft beer movement.
Storefast Solutions nabbed one and although this was a good starting point, Kirby said the business outgrew it quickly.
“We initially moved into canning with one of these entry level machines; limited capital on the investment front, but what we quickly learned they were quite hard to run. You have to work quite hard to make good products at a competitive price.
“We wanted to make sure we kept hold of our customers as they evolved and we have since invested in a small to medium sized machine. This is easier to run and is easier to make good quality product with and it produces less wastage.”
The £3m investment includes a new filler, pasteuriser and end of line automation, with 15k cans able to be produced in one hour. This is an increased canning capacity five times the size of what Storefast Solutions had originally.
But the investment was not just about speed, the demand for RTD premium drinks is being fuelled by advances in quality and experience too. Storefast Solutions’ canning line can fill widget cans – essentially a can with a piece of plastic in that is designed to release nitrogen slowly when you open it. The trick with this is the turning, with such cans having to be flipped within around 1.5 seconds of the fill – a process which the new line has built in. This technology enables the user to crack open a canned cocktail that possesses the classic foamy head associated with beverages like espresso martinis.
This bit of kit is quite limited in the UK and European market, especially at the size of runs Storefast are doing (specifically targeting SMEs), so it makes the business pretty unique. But focus has also been given to the formulation of the drink, with Storefast Solutions making its own authentic cold brew, liquid coffee that is filtered to use within its espresso martini.
“It’s all about the expertise of the people putting the formulations together. We have been very lucky with the entrepreneurs we have worked with, but we have also invested in some great people.”
The business isn’t just about espresso martinis though, with the capabilities to produce a whole host of drinks, including the ability to manage tricky, pulpy beverages as a result of its longstanding experience with juice.
The investment into a new canning line has also been complemented with money injected into the wider facilities, with a particular focus on sustainability.
“Sustainability is increasingly important to everyone. We realised that in a factory built in the 1980s we had some efficiencies that could be improved upon. We have replaced all our internal panels which are now 40% more efficient, significantly reducing our carbon footprint.”
The factory has also had a new £1m freezer fitted on-site, complete with modern panels and new compressors. This move away from an external freezer has thus reduced the business’s food miles.
But the “most exciting development” according to Kirby are the solar panels.
“We have an acre of solar panels on the roof. We are a perfect consumer of this type of energy generation because we are busiest in the summer and our biggest draw is chilling and frozen requirements during that time. In July 2024, we were only 4% dependent on the grid during the day.”
What’s next in store(fast)?
Over the last five years, the company has grown by 400% and Kirby is keen to keep expanding.
He continues to see opportunities in the premium soft drinks and alcoholic beverage market and has said the business will carrying on rationalising its position in RTD cocktails.
The business is also seeing a lot of traction in functional drinks and as such has been doing quite a lot of work in kombucha.
“We offer services like cross flow filtration which allows a more authentic kombucha product at point of filling.”
The sweetspot for the business will continue to be medium-sized businesses with very particular volume requirements, but it has also seen its services favoured by blue chip brands too.
Over the last five years, it has been building up its liquid development team and laboratory services, benefiting SMEs looking to get creative in a proper kitchen and bigger brands which use the site as an innovation hub to avoid stopping their own lines for trials.
“We are in a really exciting place of our journey, seeing big retailers and brands come to us but still having touchpoints with start-ups,” Kirby concluded.