Q+A27 Green Spot – popular 1950s soft drink – To Kwa Wan/Aberdeen factory?
We are looking for information about and images of the production of Green Spot orangeade in Hong Kong. Below is what we have up to now:
Lawrence Tsui: I remember a soft drink production company in the early 50s in the To Kwa Wan area where one could watch the production line from the street through a huge window. I think it was the Green Spot factory. It was quite an entertainment for a small kid.
Undated advert Courtesy: SCMP
Linda Kernan’s article, The Vitasoy Story, includes “when the [Vitasoy] Aberdeen factory opened in 1950 it was used for bottling of Greenspot orangeade while Vitasoy remained in the Causeway Bay factory.”
York Lo adds: Here is what I gathered from multiple sources – Green Spot was founded in California in 1934, by the late 1930s it was already bottled in Shanghai, (the licensee was Lau Bong, who was also involved in Camelpaint).
In HK – Vitasoy obtained the rights to bottle it in 1950 as the article you cited implied but by 1958 the rights were passed on to Amoy Canning. It is unclear why/how Vitasoy gave up on Green Spot but by 1956 they already started bottling Pepsi and Amoy also got the rights to Green Spot in Singapore and Malaysia.
Thousands upon thousands of Hong Kong children and adults must have drunk the orangeade.
Can you add to what Lawrence, Linda and York tell us about the production of Green Spot in Hong Kong?
See:
- Green Spot (soft drink) Wikipedia
- Green Spot USA
This Q+A was first posted on 21st January 2015.