Lyons square bags

Glaceon

I see Lyons have changed their packaging and gone back to square tea bags. Must be the first time in about 30 years that they've been square. I remember them changing to round in the 90s before the pyramid bags came in. I wonder why they changed, cost saving maybe?

blackbox

Maybe they won't burst as easily as the pyramid ones.

I gave up buying Lyons teabags because they burst so often.

magicbastarder

no change in the branding, was there? we were recently able to get several boxes of loose leaf lyon's tea in tesco recently, heavily discounted, but with plenty of life left in the best before date.

we thought it might have been related to the facelift they were doing in some of the stores, but if they were changing the bags as part of a rebranding it might explain it.

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121248649#Comment_121248649

Yes, new packaging and logo too.

techman1

Maybe difficulties in the packaging plant with pyramid bags ,probably a lot of waste etc in the plant, therefore revert to square bags for efficiency. I think price and raw material prices a bigger factor now than consumer stuff. There is a lack of production capacity in all industry therefore don't need to spend so much appealing to consumer fads

Butson

Bought Lyons Gold yesterday, new bags and packaging.

I'd swear its different, not as strong at all.

SilvaMuppet

Yeah, got the gold blend in the shopping delivery the other day and thought I'd made a mistake.

Green box and square bags.....thought it was the classic blend....there was panic in this house.

Kids were accusing me of getting the "wrong stuff" (they are pretty militant about their tea....no barrys cos its muck and has to be gold blend)

Once cooler heads prevailed we realized there must be a rebrand as it says Gold blend on the box....weirdly though it seems to taste different, we can't figure out if its psychosomatic and just in our heads (as they are trolling us with the green box) or if something has actually changed.

artanevilla

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121248636#Comment_121248636

I'd say I've drank a million pyramid bags without any bursting.

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249095#Comment_121249095

I found that when they first moved to the biodegradable pyramids I did have a few burst, but it settled down after a while. I haven't personally noticed a difference in the taste so far.

Very interesting they have changed, especially considering Lyon’s made a big deal when launching pyramid teabags about how great they were.

Supposedly the shape helps the tea brew better, so if that’s true why change now? Doesn’t make sense!

I wonder if there’s been an acquisition or change of ownership etc somewhere that’s lead to this? Could make sense if say Barry’s and Lyon’s are owned by the same crowd to just stick to a standard teabag design.

Then again we’re all talking about Lyon’s tea at the moment so that could be the angle. 🫡

Irish_wolf

As someone who drinks Barry's in work and Lyon's at home (They're both fine teas but Barry's more bitter notes help mask the super hard water from the canteen boiler) that's a big mistake if ever I saw it. The pyramid bag was a key selling point for Lyon's for me. Much less likely to get that concentrated bitter extraction from the tea and a more even infusion overall. Likewise I've never had a pyramid bag burst. If this is a cost saving measure I can see myself switching over completely if that's their game. Life's too short to be drinking rubbish tea.

Unilever sold their tea business to a fund called CVC Capital back in 2022 and is spun out as Lipton Teas and Infusions.

They're headquartered in the Netherlands now and the range includes PG tips, Lyons, Brookbond, Lipton, Pukka, T2, Taco, Red Rose Tea etc.

Lyons is packed in the UK, so whatever they're doing with PG Tips will be done with Lyons as they're not likely to have multiple production systems. I'd assume they just blend whatever the current Lyons specific blend is and run batches through the same systems.

The other possibility is that due to Brexit they've moved the Lyons production to a tea packing plant elsewhere and it's being run on teh same lines as Lipton or something.

Lyons isn't an Irish product and never really was. It originated in that Lyons Tea Shop brand years ago.

artanevilla

Tea joins the race to the bottom. "How can we do things worse?"

Tea is one of those highly specific things, so if you mess with it people will move away.

Also, looking back at the old ads here, Lyons wasn't as dominant in the past.

A bit of clever marketing has somehow convinced us it's a great Irish traditional tea.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249191#Comment_121249191

Lyon's is (or was) owned by Unilever and they fairly infamously moved production to the Netherlands

There was some talk of them selling it a couple of years ago but I don't think they were moving production

Unilever (as above) exited the tea business in 2022. They're owned by 'Lipton Teas and Infusions'

Brexit could well have accelerated any move to the Netherlands or elsewhere, as it would be potentially expensive to import asian and African teas into the UK, blend them there and then re-export them to the EU (Ireland) for a bulk and quite staple product like a mass market black tea in a tea drinking country.

The flavour of the tea is from the blend - the packing plant isn't going to have a ton of influence on that - unless they're getting the blend wrong or they've changed it.

The margins on those teas is a lot lower than some of the fancy herbal stuff.

I would also suspect there's a bit of marketing magic about the pyramid bags. It's just ground up tea in a bag. The quality of the filter paper the bag's made out of would be more relevant and the fact it has a bit of space in side to expand. Most of the time you're mashing it around with a spoon anyway, especially with those kinds of standard black teas for a normal cuppa.

mrs Doyle’s everywhere, unite.

the_amazing_raisin

The new box ⬆️

Unilever branding is gone, I do have a vague memory of them selling their whole black tea operation. I guess it's under new ownership

Haven't bought any yet, noticed Super Value have a few of the old boxes. Maybe I should stock up

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249415#Comment_121249415

Weirdly their website doesn’t show this new branding

Regardless, I don’t like it.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249420#Comment_121249420

We'll see if it passes the taste test, otherwise Herr Aldi will be getting my tea money in future 😂

L1011

There's been a huge change to bags without plastic sealers. Did they manage to do that with the pyramids or is it possible they can only do it on flat bags?

I can remember the pyramid bag hype and I can also remember the round bag hype - massively wasteful shape to make compared to a square. As is a pyramid probably, another reason it could be gone.

scottygee

I don't like it, completely unnecessary change. And oh boy how much I hatted the pyramid bags, now that I see then being mentioned...

techman1

Unilever sold their tea business to a fund called CVC Capital back in 2022 and is spun out as Lipton Teas and Infusions.

Thanks reading into this Unilever sold lipton teas which includes Lyons to cvc credit partners. They are the biggest private equity company in Europe and are based in the Netherlands. However they are going to do an IPO this year and float on the stock exchange. It's interesting that a financial would choose to get involved directly in the food and beverage business. Maybe they foresee food as being a more profitable business in the future and that probably means higher prices. As for aldi and lidl brands they are essentially produced by the same production plants, so those plants will now have pricing power

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249457#Comment_121249457

Did the pyramid bags use more material? I would have thought they were the same amount as the square bags, just closed the other way

beertons

I knew the taste was a bit off yesterday. I'll be looking for a new brand me thinks.

I think though the bag shape hype is just that - marketing differentiation.

I could see literally no difference between the way a Barry's flat bag and a Lyon's pyramid bag brewed.

It reminds me of all the b/s about various washing liquid balls and stuff or dishwasher tablet with magic compartments.

Loose tea definitely tastes better, but it's just messy to handle. I think the difference there may be more about the cut size of the tealeaves too. The bags have very finely sliced up leaves, whereas the looser stuff is a lot larger, which probably means it retains more of the volatile flavours as the particles are less likely to dry out fully.

I'd suspect the pyramid bags are harder to fill, pack and process too. They're quite bulky and don't stack properly in boxes and it's just a big waste of packaging and that's now a major issue for companies with sustainability objectives.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249728#Comment_121249728

Cutting the shape would leave more leftover margin material

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121250044#Comment_121250044

Well, probably not the case with pyramid seeing as they’d just be squares folded into a pyramid

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121250044#Comment_121250044

I don't think so, I'm looking at one now and it's effectively just a tube of material which gets sealed in two different directions to make a pyramid

I agree the bag shape is just hype, it probably just brews the tea a bit faster than square bags

I reckon it was cost cutting, the pyramid bags probably require more complex packaging and slower throughput

Butson

Having to use two of these bags in a cup to get the same taste as before.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249603#Comment_121249603

There's some interesting articles about the buyout, including this one from FT

https://www.ft.com/content/83529b44-f290-4668-a766-5559dfec431c

Apparently the tea business wasn't doing great so Unilever were looking to unload it to someone else

CVC are apparently hoping to improve the ESG ratings of the company and sell it on for a profit

This will likely require some degree of cost savings to free up cash to invest elsewhere in the business, so the square bags is likely part of this

I remember when reading about the acquisition I had an outside hope that someone would buy the Lyons brand and bring production back to Dublin

Wishful thinking I suspect, the margin is way too low to justify manufacturing in Ireland

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121249457#Comment_121249457

They did convert to biodegradable materials a few years ago. I remember having a few burst on me afterwards. A friend of mine on Facebook said the same thing. But it settled down after a while and it has been a long while since one burst.

Butson

interview here with the Head of the new company. Confirms that pyramid bags being replaced with square.

INTERVIEW

Lipton’s Nathalie Roos: I’ll make PG Tips as cool as coffee

While sales of our traditional cuppa have sunk, Roos is brewing up ways to reverse the trend

The Alsace-born Nathalie Roos turned around Mars’s French business, ditching products. At Lipton it’s the same recipe

t’s hotter than hell in London, but Nathalie Roos looks as cool as only the French can.

She puts it down to her Christian Dior trouser suit, selected by her personal shopper back home in Strasbourg, but that doesn’t explain why the Brits in the hotel bar are sweating buckets while she’s as fresh as a mojito.

Luckily, the Alsace-born executive runs Lipton Teas and Infusions, the multibillion-pound business behind that most British of brands, PG Tips. So, while the tables around us tuck into G&Ts, we slake our thirsts with a refreshing cuppa — black, no sugar, for her; white, with one, for me.

Business briefing Morning and midday updates on financial and economic news from our award-winning business team. Sign up with one click

“Tea is so central in this country,” she says. “It’s like, tea can solve it all.”

Unilever didn’t agree. Last year it sold its tea operations to the private equity house CVC for €4.5 billion, having failed to improve its flatlined sales for years.

The new owners tapped up Roos from L’Oréal, where she’d been running the professional products business, selling €900 million a year’s worth of Kérastase, Redken and other haircare brands to hairdressers.

Disposing of Unilever’s name “ekaterra”, Roos has rebranded the tea portfolio

ALAMY

She doesn’t mince her French-inflected words when asked about Unilever’s stewardship of Lipton, whose cuppas also include Pukka, T2 and Tazo. The brands, she says, had got “lost” in the vast business, whose products ranged from razors to soap.

“What we inherited from Unilever was a lack of pride and confidence, both in the brands and in the [tea] category.”

Nothing highlighted this more than its irritating decision to choose a made-up name for the teas operation when it decided to split the brands away from the core Unilever business. It came up with “ekaterra”. A random word typed out by an infinite number of PG Tips chimpanzees? No. Unilever’s marketing guff said eka is sanskrit for “one” and terra is Latin for “Earth”.

Roos will have none of it: “They made up this name to hide and look like they’re a sustainable, tah, tah, tah [French for “blah blah blah”] company.”

Changing the name to Lipton — the biggest brand in the portfolio, with €1 billion of turnover in more than 100 countries — was one of her first moves.

She says the lack of attention Unilever had paid to the business provides an opportunity to expand it and make a profit in the process. Not just growing the company, but the tea market generally.

A former marketer for Nescafé’s arch rival Maxwell House, she says the tea industry should have learnt from the coffee market, where brands invested to go upmarket and expand demand. Where coffee sales volumes in the UK have surged from 50 million kg a year to nearly 90 million over the past 20 years, tea has shrunk from 120 million to nearly 80 million, according to Kantar data.

Roos says: “We will take industry leadership because nobody else has. Unilever should have done it, but because tea was so small in their total portfolio they have not done it. Now, we will. We are a €2 billion [a year] business, dedicated only to tea, with a fantastic portfolio of brands.”

The PG Tips pyramid tea bag will be dropped in favour of a square bag, though one of higher quality filter paper.

Always found Pg tips very weak tea.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121250402#Comment_121250402

She's surprisingly forthright for a CEO of a multi billion euro company, I'm in danger of actually starting to like her

Let's hope she turns the business around, but it's difficult to see how

Tea is about a generic a product as there is. Herbal tea brands like Pukka were probably the closest they got to upmarket

My main worry is they'll ruthlessly cut costs and ditch the underperforming brands, which would probably include Lyon's as it's only popular in one corner of Ireland

Scipri0

Normally when a company changes a product's packaging and design, some use that to hide the fact that they've downsized the product. So compare the new box with the old and see if there's any difference, like less teabags etc.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121250813#Comment_121250813

The box of 160 is definitely smaller, I'd say it's between half and two thirds the size of the red box

The shrinkage is probably down to the flat bags packing better

This would definitely be a cost saving as you can fit more boxes to a pallet. Cutting the number of pallets shipped to Ireland by 30% would probably represent a significant saving

Also the different blends are now all in similar boxes (all green). Again that's a saving on printing because 90% of the box can be done on a single printer using the same ink and the different bits only use a small amount of ink

techman1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121251029#Comment_121251029

that suggests that the consumer is not as powefull as 20 years ago, therefore producers are happy to streamline operations, improve efficiencies and cut costs confident that it won't be detrimental to demand. 20 years ago it was all about appealing to the consumer, fancy boxes, pyramid tea bags, loads of TV advertising etc, now it seems they don't feel the need to do that anymore. Its the same thing with cars because of production constraints and shortages, the big car companies are not advertising like they used to except for electric cars which are basically a new product

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121251299#Comment_121251299

It’s more the way advertising works has shifted. TV adverts don’t have the reach they once did. Ads on social media (incl YouTube, twitch etc) would serve more people than TV these days especially with younger people.

Also how products looks is less of a concern to the consumer as much as sustainability in packaging etc.

Brands are still targeting the consumer but in different and generally far more subtle ways. In your face advertising is seen as offensive and annoying or intrusive.

And I think it’s fair to say everyone especially now is more cost aware. Fancy gimmicks at the expense of consumers won’t sell products. People are far more price concerned and a lot will happily sub Lyon’s or Barry’s for a cheaper alternative. It’s a competitive market to be in and brand recognition won’t win like it used to.

Sustainability, quality & affordability are far more important than in your face advertising or pyramids. At least that would be my opinion.

The consumer has more power than you might think.

I'm not so sure about that - Tea's not that expensive and it's very taste specific and familiar.

To save on your groceries the big money items are things like household products.

Flinty997

Has to be cost cutting.

Like someone else said earlier I thought the new bag it tasted weaker. We'd had some Tesco tea bags recently and thought they were weaker at the time. This Gold blend seems a move in that direction.

We have Barry's at work and I'm not a fan but I've got used to it.

techman1

And I think it’s fair to say everyone especially now is more cost aware. Fancy gimmicks at the expense of consumers won’t sell products. People are far more price concerned and a lot will happily sub Lyon’s or Barry’s for a cheaper alternative. It’s a competitive market to be in and brand recognition won’t win like it used to.

Sustainability, quality & affordability are far more important than in your face advertising or pyramids. At least that would be my opinion.

Yes I agree with your analysis to an extent. However I think production now has more of a say over consumption especially in relatively low profit products like tea. You no longer have huge competition in tea production as it is a very mature business, all the small operators have been bought up or gone out of business, therefore Liptons are confident that nobody is going to set up a brand new production facility. Also more than likely they also produce the tea for Lidl and Aldi , therefore there is only so much cheaper that Lidl or Aldi could sell their brands for anyway because probably only Twinnings or Tetleys are the only alternative producers. They are not going to undercut their main brands too much if they also producing supermarket brands. In any case I have noticed that the prices of the alternatives have risen alot in the last few years by around 50%

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121251435#Comment_121251435

I'm gonna have to disagree with the idea that fancy gimmicks don't sell products, just look at any wearable device or the entire Apple product range 😁

I think it's more than people see teabags as a commodity item, gimmicks like the pyramid bags aren't going to sell more so why bother?

It's a constrained market anyway, Lyon's doesn't exist outside Ireland and is famously the "Dublin" tea and Barry's is the "everywhere else" tea

Or so I'm informed by people who drink Barry's and aren't from Dublin, good reliable sources 😂

Anyway, my point is that it's unlikely that the French or Germans or Chinese are going to suddenly start drinking cups of Lyon's tea, so there's no opportunity to grow the market

I think if there's money in tea, it's in the herbal teas. I believe Unilever even kept that section if their tea business when they sold off the rest since it was more profitable

Scipri0

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121251029#Comment_121251029

Every time there's a "new" change on a product, it most likely means they're cutting down else where, that's how many items you get in a box, or the quality, it's mostly done to increase profits at the expense of the product.

Glaceon

I see they’ve posted on Facebook for the first time since April 2021 to announce the change.

Butson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121254546#Comment_121254546

Backs up the assertion made above that Unilever didn't care about these brands, not updating their social media.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121255305#Comment_121255305

They probably felt the market was saturated with no room for growth

It isn't like there was suddenly going to be a fad in China for breakfast tea and sales will go up by 10,000%

We're the weirdos in the world drinking blended black tea with milk, pretty sure it's just here and the UK where that's popular

I remember years ago I got a glass (yes, a glass) of tea in Germany. I asked for milk in the tea and the poor cashier in the cafe was looking at me like I'd grown another head and it was speaking to her in Sanskrit

That was one of my first indicators that there may be some cultural differences around drinking tea 😂

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121256292#Comment_121256292

Not at all exclusive to us! Sure you’ve surely seen Bubble Tea? That is generally brown sugar milk tea.

Now look it’s not a Barry’s tea bag, but it’s black tea with milk and sugar for all intents and purposes!

Tea in and of itself is pretty diverse though so it’s hardly a shock there’s so many different ways to drink it!

techman1

We're the weirdos in the world drinking blended black tea with milk, pretty sure it's just here and the UK where that's popular

Tea popular in the Arab world ,Asia, Pakistan and India along with Australia.

I was in Germany last year and found a bag of Pakistani tea in the hotel kitchen. Had a cup of it, absolutely delicious . Maybe drinking milky tea is an irish thing but we are definitely not weirdos in our attachment to tea. It always was and will be an important traded commodity. Like all commodities it's price is rising fast and you will notice that especially with the supermarket brands, up 50% in last few years

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121258664#Comment_121258664

Yeah I meant we're outliers drinking tea with milk, at least in the way we prepare it

I remember living with an Indian couple who would make tea by heating milk to just below boiling and then adding loose tea and a tiny amount of water

It basically made some super strength latte tea thingy (is that a chai latte 🤔?)

So it's tea with milk, but that's where the similarities to the way we make tea end

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121258622#Comment_121258622

I guess the key thing there is you can present bubble tea as a high end product, and thus grow the market and make more money

I don't really see CVC capital or anyone else pulling off the same trick with Lyon's or anything similar

They do market English tea internationally and there's probably space for it to grow, but I think it's unlikely they'll be doing it under the Lyon's or Lipton brands

They'll likely spin out a new brand with much nicer packaging, and pyramid teabags. Oh, and at triple the price 😕

So Lyon's has probably hit it's market peak and if they want to make it more profitable the only avenue is to cut costs