The progression from baking Belgian goodies to brewing all-natural sodas is more logical than it appears at first glance.
Motueka couple Marleen and Pete Suy, the creators of Pete’s Natural Sodas, grew up in Belgium – Marleen was literally “born in a bakery” to baker parents and Pete undertook the six-year apprenticeship required in his home country to become a qualified baker. As Marleen puts it, he’s an expert in “breads, pastries, chocolates, sugars, everything” to do with baking. “We started our first bakery at 21 and operated one up until ten years ago,” says Marleen.
They moved to New Zealand 19 years ago and lived in the North Island initially but fell in love with the Nelson region on a holiday and made the move south. Several years after the move they were at a party and were served elderflower lemonade. They loved it and Pete, an enthusiastic and creative foodie, knew he could make it so started to experiment with hops as they were in season.
As a baker who had worked with live yeast, he understood processes like fermentation and was highly skilled in ingredient blending, knowing how different ingredients react. “He’s usually spot on,” says Marleen. “And he has a really good palate.” The sodas they produce today are created from that knowledge and Pete’s bespoke process, developed over the years. The sodas are lightly fermented, but the process is stopped partway through so the drinks retain the health benefits of fermentation but have a longer shelf life and reduced need for refrigeration. Pete continues to develop all the company recipes using locally sourced ingredients.
For a while after starting their fledgling lemonade brand – that would later evolve into Pete’s Natural Sodas – they ran both businesses but had to make a choice between the two. The drinks were taking off and needed more time and money from the couple. Peter had also been working night hours for nearly 40 years and developing the soda was a day job, so the decision was made. Once the plan for a drinks brand was developed, they knew they wanted to be both local and sustainable. “Looking around, there was a lot of fruit on the ground in the area that wasn’t being used and we thought ‘how can we change this’.” Local growers told them it wasn’t worth picking the fruit when imported concentrates or artificial flavours were more economical.
Pete and Marleen thought they could produce a healthy drink using local fruit – and they were pioneers in that regard. “Fourteen years ago, nobody else was really thinking about it.” Their partnership with local growers is one they’re proud of. Farmers receive a fair price for the fruit, and food waste is reduced.
The bottling plant is entirely solar powered, with 48 panels giving them all the energy they need for their weekday operation and extra energy produced on the weekend going back into the grid. Their bottles are made from recycled glass, and they use paper labels and biodegradeble wrap for packing. The bottling process itself is simple and in keeping with their sustainability focus. “It’s a simple set up, not too automated,” Marleen says. “We have got some new equipment, like a rinser for the bottles, but then there is a 1960 filling machine.” The lack of modern electronics is a bonus because it means Pete can maintain all the equipment himself.
A bit of R&D was required due to their insistence on using real fruit. The fibres couldn’t get through the filling tubes. “We had some adjustments to make and it’s all pretty flawless now.” Their system is so seamless and simple it can bottle up to 1800 drinks per hour, with three workers on the machines. Investing in more automation is something they’ve looked at, but for now, it just doesn’t make sense.
Including Peter and Marleen, Pete’s Natural Sodas employs eight people, and has earned recognition with Food Producer Awards, a Small Business Award and a Social Impact Award they’re especially proud of, for a partnership with HeartKidsNZ that resulted in a $12,000 donation from sales of pink lemonade. That partnership is ongoing to this day.
Always looking to develop new ideas, the couple is working on a canning line – with the same challenges as bottling with fibre in the tubes – and the expanded markets it could open up.
Currently supplying mainly domestic customers, Pete’s Natural Sodas has one company doing a small amount of export for them, but they hope to grow that, and canning will help that along (being lighter and cheaper to export).
Like many local food and beverage producers, they love being a Nelson-Tasman based business. “Shipping is pretty good, there’s no downsides.”
