INNOVATION, INNOVATION, INNOVATION
Damin, Finlays' China-based joint venture, is going from strength to strength. 1750 spoke to Damin’s Chief Operating Officer Mote Pooley to find out more about Damin’s capabilities, and to discover what the future holds.
Words: Thom Walton
Thank you for joining us, Mote. For those who aren’t aware, could you introduce Damin to our readers?
Damin – a joint venture between Finlays and Damin founder and Chairman Mr. Jiang Aiqing – is one of the world’s leading suppliers of tea, coffee and botanicals extracts. We offer a wide and growing range of product categories, and our products are supplied from three manufacturing sites located in Zhangzhou and Nanjing, whilst we have a new headquarters in Shanghai which opened in 2023.
Tell us about your new HQ and why you chose Shanghai
Our new corporate headquarters in Shanghai marks the start of an exciting new chapter in our history. Given the majority of Damin's domestic key account customers are concentrated around the Shanghai region, establishing our presence in China's bustling commercial hub is central to our mission to continually enhance our service levels and customer centricity. Going forward, our customers can now find Damin's Sales and R&D teams more conveniently based out of the new Shanghai headquarters, ready to respond more quickly and directly to our customers’ needs and enquiries.
What sort of products and solutions does Damin offer?
Based on our customers’ specific requirements, we can supply products in either liquid or powder format, offering both spray-dried and freeze-dried options for our powders. So whether you need a particular variety of tea extract, blended leaf tea, herbal tea concentrates or hot or cold brew coffee extract, Damin can develop the perfect solution for you. We also offer botanicals, fruit or vegetable extracts, compound formulations, flavoured syrups, freeze-dried solid products or even monkfruit-derived all-natural sweeteners.
Packaging is important too and our options include most of the standard pack types typically used for raw materials supply to manufacturers (cartons, bags, BIB, etc.). In addition we have also developed capability for a wide array of convenient packaging types ready for final retail use, again both in liquid as well as powder or solid format. These packaging types include numerous configurations of sachets, strips, sticks, tea bags, mini cups and capsules, pillow packs, pouches and PET bottles, as well as Tetra Pak.
With our processing capabilities and freeze-drying equipment, we can also supply a wide range of solid applications packaged into individual servings, such as fruit tea blocks that instantly dissolve in water, healthy yoghurt snacks, or even instant soup mixes.
Through all of these options, we can help our customers deliver the right solution for their specific target positioning, market and consumer segments.
R&D is important to Damin. What are your capabilities in this area?
Having broad and deep R&D capabilities has always been central to our unique value proposition. Damin’s Research Institute comprises over 70 dedicated R&D professionals, divided into specialist teams across the broad disciplines of Raw Materials R&D as well as Applications R&D. This team is committed to continuous innovation and, over the years, it has been awarded more than forty scientific
invention patents, more than twenty utility model patents, and developed more than 11,000 product formulations.
Therefore, no matter whether in the field of extraction technology research, functional evaluations, leaf tea or coffee applications, food service channel solutions, or indeed final retail product development, Damin’s teams of R&D subject matter experts are ready and waiting to support our customers on any particular project or enquiry.
How does Damin ensure agility in responding to customer need?
We have a full range of pilot line capabilities in place and are able to provide comprehensive production trials and validations for all project types throughout the development process, prior to progressing to full-scale production phase. With the additional pilot line that we are currently setting up at our new Shanghai headquarters (scheduled to be online by Q4 2023), we will offer even greater responsiveness and agility to support the requirements of our customers around the Shanghai region.
What is your approach to delivering high-quality products?
Damin has extensive in-house capability and experience in laboratory testing, operations and management. In 2019, we established Jike Testing Technology (Fujian) Co. Ltd as an independent testing agency. Jike handles external business in addition to Damin’s in-house testing requirements and has developed testing and detection capability for more than 30 food categories, including edible agricultural products, condiments, meat products, cakes and beverages.
Having obtained all relevant accreditations (such as CMA, CNAS, CATL and UK FAPAS), and with capability for over 2,000 testing items developed to date, Jike represents another area where Damin is uniquely positioned to support our customers, and where we are continuing to expand both capability and capacity.
What about Damin’s manufacturing capabilities?
Our products are sold all across the world, and we are privileged to partner with a diverse range of brand owners, manufacturers, food service operators and retailers, as well as health product companies. We have invested in a comprehensive range of production lines and packaging capabilities. With these extensive manufacturing capabilities complementing our R&D services, Damin can offer a truly “one-stop” solution to take our customers’ projects from concept development through to delivery.
How does Damin work with Finlays?
There are many different ways in which Damin and the wider Finlays group work together. For example, on the commercial side, we take a group approach to managing major global customers, in which our local contact points manage the relationship in each region to supplement the relationship at the central/head office level.
Damin also leverages the group’s upstream raw material supply network in order to offer our customers a wider variety of product options, such as tea bags with Kenya or Sri-Lanka-sourced leaf tea. Meanwhile, as a group, we also work closely together in other key areas including quality, health and safety, and sustainability. Going forward, there are countless possibilities to further leverage our group’s combined capabilities across the different regions, which can only be a good thing for our customers and consumers.
What does the future hold for Damin?
Damin has always been committed to promoting healthy living and, looking ahead, we anticipate that the focus on health and wellbeing is only going to intensify; as such we are continuing to expand into health product categories, so that we can offer an increasing number of product types with validated functional and nutritional benefits. By bringing together our strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities to support our partners, we are uniquely positioned to unlock more value together, and to play our part in bringing healthier lifestyles to consumers around the world.
Mote Pooley is Chief Operating Officer of Damin
