Bundaberg Brewed Drinks aims to boost South Korean market with new drink

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks is planning to reveal a new flavour for its growing South Korean market – its first new product specifically for the international market.

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks chief executive John McLean.

Australia’s leading craft brewed premium soft drink company is shaking up its offshore expansion plans in 2025 and will release a new drink aimed at its growing South Korean market.

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks chief executive John McLean said they were finalising new products to be unveiled at a major trade show in Singapore in April.

“We have one we are just finalising for South Korea and it will be the first time we’ve launched a new flavour specifically for an international market,” he said. Mr McLean said at this stage he could not reveal any more details of the new drinks other then to say it was a precise and exhaustive process.

There will also be new drink flavours for the Australian and New Zealand market.

The company had slowly been seeding its expansive range of drinks into South Korea, and Bundaberg soft drinks have been seen in video clips from K-Pop band Stray Kids.

K-Pop loves Bundaberg Brewed Drinks.

Mr McLean said it was important to understand what consumers wanted.

“A few years ago I was in South Korea and I noticed there was a lot of pink grapefruit available, either as a juice or as a fruit,” he said.

“We released our pink grapefruit up there and now it’s our biggest line in South Korea.”

The new products were part of the company’s domestic and overseas expansion plans powered by its super brewery which opened in 2023 in Bundaberg, four hours north of Brisbane.

The $152m 22,000sq m brewery – more than triple the footprint of the company’s previous facility – produces about 51,000 non-alcoholic drink bottles an hour on the one production line.

“As it stands … it runs 24 hours five days a week,” Mr McLean said. “That’s phase one of a multiphase approach and as demand increases we can expand in multiple directions and ways.”

The company was established in Bundaberg in 1960 as a bottling and fermenting business and the Fleming family bought it in 1968. It was then Electra Breweries.

In 1995, the company changed its name to Bundaberg Brewed Drinks and now can be found in more than 60 countries. It employs about 275 people in Australia and overseas.

In 2022, Bundaberg Brewed Drinks was named the 2022 Queensland Exporter of the Year.

Bundaberg Brewed Drinks company founder Cliff Fleming.

Mr McLean, the son-in-law of business founders Cliff and Lee Fleming, said in the 2024 financial year the company recorded just under $200m in revenue.

He refused to quantify targets but said they were “aiming for more growth” in FY25.

About 50 per cent of its brewed products is consumed in Australia, followed by New Zealand which on a per capita basis is the company’s largest consumer.

It also has strong sales in South Korea, the US through its partnership with PepsiCo, China, Germany, UK and Malaysia.

“I think 2025 is looking really positive,” Mr McLean said. “We are looking at what we can do to strengthen our international business and grow our domestic base.”

Mr McLean said they had 10 standard flavour products including ginger beer, pink grape fruit. lemonade, passionfruit, lemon, lime and bitters, and creaming soda. However, those 10 products turn into just a bit under 300 stock keeping units because of the demands from different markets.

“What works in South Korea to meet their food regulation standards does not work in China or Europe,” Mr McLean said.

“It would be great of there was only one world body with standard sugar and preservative levels. It’s really all about the nuances at the minutiae end of the product. That’s what our business does.”

Originally published as Bundaberg Brewed Drinks aims to boost South Korean market with new drink