{"id":3387,"date":"2026-09-21T11:36:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T11:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/?p=3387"},"modified":"2026-09-21T11:37:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T11:37:18","slug":"the-battle-for-the-cold-chain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/the-battle-for-the-cold-chain\/","title":{"rendered":"The Battle for the Cold Chain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

How Nykyta Izmaylov and SPRAGA plan to conquer Europe\u2019s kombucha market<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European soft drinks market is undergoing an unusual transformation. Demand for healthier alternatives to sugary fizzy drinks grows by the day, yet 93% of European households have still never bought kombucha. The potential is enormous: forecasts put the market’s growth from \u20ac2.4 billion to \u20ac5.9 billion by 2029, at a compound annual growth rate of 19.4%. And still no clear leader has emerged on the continent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nykyta Izmaylov<\/strong>, founder of SPRAGA<\/strong>, believes the problem isn’t a lack of consumer interest. People don’t buy kombucha every day for one simple reason: traditional retail can’t guarantee an uninterrupted cold chain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most major distributors opt for pasteurisation: a pasteurised drink keeps for months on an ordinary shelf. But pasteurisation kills the live fermentation, turning kombucha into little more than sweetened tea. For now, SPRAGA has chosen the harder path \u2014 building its own local hubs and holding temperatures between 2\u00b0C and 8\u00b0C across the product’s entire journey to the consumer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This isn’t pasteurisation ruled out on principle \u2014 it’s a decision about what the category needs first. While kombucha is still winning its place on European shelves, SPRAGA believes the live product is what sets it apart, and won’t dilute that to chase easier distribution. If the market later shows a real appetite for a shelf-stable version, the company is open to it \u2014 provided it can be done without giving up the taste and the living culture that make SPRAGA what it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another risk comes from contract manufacturing. When production is outsourced, quality inevitably varies from batch to batch. To preserve its organic acids and live bacteria, SPRAGA scales exclusively through its own facilities, certified to IFS Food, ISO and BRC standards and verified by Kombucha Brewers International (KBI).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

If you make a product only for healthy-lifestyle enthusiasts, you’ll never build a large business. People should buy SPRAGA not because they feel they have to, or because it’s healthy, but because it genuinely tastes good.<\/em>  \u2014 Nykyta Izmaylov<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

To cover the European market, the company has bet on decentralisation. Its first production facility, in Prague, already serves Central Europe. A second, in Lisbon, with capacity of up to 8 million cans a month, will serve Spain, Portugal and France \u2014 where kombucha sales have surged by 437%, and the wider functional drinks segment has grown by 130%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local hubs shorten the journey to the shelf. That makes it possible to keep the live product for up to nine months without losing its microbiome \u2014 and opens the door to major retail chains in Germany and the United Kingdom, the latter second only to the United States in kombucha sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It’s not about what you drink at a party. What matters is what sits in your fridge every day instead of sugary fizzy drinks. What if a naturally fermented drink were on every supermarket shelf, and became as routine a purchase as bread or milk?<\/em>  \u2014 Nykyta Izmaylov<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The category’s main drivers are the retreat from sugar and the search for good alternatives to alcohol. Some 78% of Europeans say they want healthier drinks \u2014 as long as they don’t have to sacrifice taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Ukraine, SPRAGA has already made this journey from scratch, capturing 71% of the market. Early on, retailers didn’t even know where kombucha belonged; because of its refrigeration needs, some suggested the dairy aisle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educating the retail chains and installing the company’s own refrigerated display units were the mechanisms that turned a niche craft product into a staple in the weekly shop. Now SPRAGA is scaling that experience across Europe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How Nykyta Izmaylov and SPRAGA plan to conquer Europe\u2019s kombucha market The European soft drinks market is undergoing an unusual transformation. Demand for healthier alternatives to sugary fizzy drinks grows by the day, yet 93% of European households have still never bought kombucha. The potential is enormous: forecasts put the market’s growth from \u20ac2.4 billion…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3388,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":43,"label":"Blogs"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/lady-drinking-juice-1024x754.jpg",1024,754,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Kokou Adzo","author_link":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/author\/kokou\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":43,"name":"Blogs","slug":"blogs","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":43,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":47,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":43,"category_count":47,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Blogs","category_nicename":"blogs","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3391,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions\/3391"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fontmirror.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}