SOFT DRINK OPEN PROFICIENCY SCHEME (ANNUAL)

SOFT DRINK OPEN PROFICIENCY SCHEME (ANNUAL)

Maintain world-class sensory standards across your soft drink and carbonated soft drink production. FlavorActiV’s Soft Drink Open Proficiency Scheme is a structured annual programme that calibrates and certifies your sensory panellists. This ensures you protect product quality and release only drinks that meet your exact flavour specifications.

£1,200.00 GBP

Quantity:

We ship globally – shipping costs may apply depending on your region

Minimum Order: £275

WHAT IS THE SOFT DRINK OPEN PROFICIENCY SCHEME?

The Soft Drink Open Proficiency Scheme is a globally accessible sensory testing programme designed for soft drink and carbonated soft drink manufacturers, co-packers, flavourists, and quality assurance teams. It uses FlavorActiV’s pharmaceutical-grade GMP Flavour Standards to simulate real-world flavour defects and positive attributes in soft drinks, enabling tasters to identify, benchmark, and improve their detection skills.

Each proficiency round consists of a blind flavour identification exercise. Tasters evaluate spiked soft drink samples, record their responses on the TVS platform, and receive a detailed performance report showing their strengths, weaknesses, and progress over time.

HOW DOES THE SOFT DRINK SENSORY PROFICIENCY SCHEME WORK?

The scheme follows a straightforward process that integrates easily into your existing QA workflow:

– Receive your GMP Flavour Standards capsules — pharmaceutically produced, and individually blister-packaged for stability
– Spike your soft drink samples as instructed using FlavorActiV’s standardised protocols
– Conduct the blind flavour identification tasting with your panel
– Log individual results on the TVS (Taster Validation Scheme) — available via any web browser or mobile device
– Receive automated performance reports showing individual and panel-level accuracy
– Track improvement round-by-round to identify training priorities and validate taster readiness

The annual subscription includes four scheduled rounds throughout the year, providing consistent, structured calibration that builds lasting sensory capability instead of one-off snapshots.

ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION VS SINGLE ROUND: WHICH IS RIGHT FOR YOU?

The annual subscription delivers better value per round and unlocks certification not available with single-round participation.

Annual Round Single Program
No of Rounds 4 1
Cost per round £300 £350
TVS Access Full Limited
Certification Yes No
Proficiency Test Flavour Identification Flavour Identification
Subscription Annual subscription Pay as you go

KEY BENEFITS OF THE SOFT DRINK SENSORY PROFICIENCY ANNUAL PROGRAMME

Continuous Skill Development
– Regular testing improves sensory memory and detection accuracy.

Reliable Benchmarking
– Track your performance across multiple rounds instead of a one-time assessment.

Improved Quality Control
– Enhance your ability to detect defects early in production.

Industry-Standard Training
– Stay aligned with best practices in beverage sensory analysis and quality assurance.

WHO SHOULD USE THIS PROFICIENCY SCHEME?

The Soft Drink Open Proficiency Scheme is designed for:

– Soft drink and CSD manufacturers managing in-house sensory panels
– Quality assurance managers are responsible for flavour consistency and defect detection
– R&D teams developing new beverages or reformulating existing products
– Flavourists and sensory scientists require periodic calibration and benchmarking
– Contract manufacturers and co-packers seeking to validate panel competence for client audits
– Organisations working towards ISO 17025, BRC or FSSC 22000 compliance requiring documented sensory validation

GET STARTED WITH THE ANNUAL PROGRAMME

Join the Soft Drink Open Proficiency Scheme (Annual) to build long-term sensory excellence and ensure your products consistently meet industry standards.

FlavorActiV GMP Flavour Standards

Only Pharmaceutical Quality GMP Flavour Standards provide sufficient quality for professional sensory panels to train and validate with.

We produce encapsulated GMP (Pharmaceutical Good Manufacturing Practice) Flavour Standards that are safe to both smell and drink. The compounds within our capsules impart the aroma, taste and mouthfeel of a specific defect or positive flavour into a beverage for the purposes of taster training, calibration and quality control.

Our individual flavour GMP Flavour Standards are sold by flavour, each flavour pack contains 5 capsules, each separately blister packaged. Our sensory kits contain a mixture of flavours, each separately blister packaged, read the product description for flavour details.

We ship globally, and have over 20 years of experience at it. Our GMP Pharmaceutical Flavour Standards are produced to the highest standards, and as such, their shelf-life is strong and their quality consistent.

FlavorActiV’s flavour centre is the world’s only pharmaceutically run facility dedicated to the production of flavour reference standards. The Flavour Centre is a state-of-the-art facility housed within the campus of world-renowned Quay Pharma near Liverpool in the U.K.

The Flavour Centre was designed by FlavorActiV from the ground up at the direct request of global customers as they looked to move away from inferior food grade ‘certified flavour standards’ to GMP Pharma, a standard that ensures safe, stable, traceable, consistent and long shelf-life products.

All FlavorActiV’s industry-leading encapsulated flavour standards are manufactured following GMP at our Flavour Centre. All aspects of manufacture are overseen by Quay Pharma who are audited by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory agency (MHRA). We also welcome customer audits.

Only FlavorActiV GMP flavour standard capsules bear our mark of authenticity.

We brand each of our capsules so that our customers know they’re getting the Pharmaceutical GMP Quality that only FlavorActiV provide.

Industry leading packaging and shelf-life

FlavorActiV flavour standards are blister packaged, which extends shelf-life and protects capsules from potential contamination. The average shelf-life of FlavorActiV flavour standards is 18 months to 4 years, depending on the flavour compounds.

We will never ship in pots or plastic packaging, here’s why…

Blister packaging protects capsules from the environment until they are ready for use. Blister packaging greatly reduces the amount of headspace for possible flavour escape. As each capsule individually blister packaged, making use of one capsule still leaves all others protected. FlavorActiV Flavour Standard packaging is 100% recyclable, as opposed to polypropylene which is not widely recycled.

Pots are semi-porous, they allow molecules to pass through and flavour to be lost, their significant headspace also adds to substantial flavour escape as a gas, even when using just one capsule all those remaining in the pot are exposed.

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