Eaton Foods Company, Ltd. (Vitalon Foods Co., Ltd.)

A Taiwanese beverage manufacturer with roughly seventy years of trading history, operating from Taichung and building its range around vitamin-fortified soft drinks, sports drinks and ready-to-drink teas. The business began in 1956 inside a pharmaceutical works, where the founder's accidental combination of a vitamin tablet with soda water led to the development of a vitamin drink; that product, a vitamin soda, is described as the first health-concept vitamin carbonated drink in the domestic market and established the company. In 1981 it introduced what it presents as the first sports drink developed specifically for Taiwanese consumers, which drove both the wider category and the company's own expansion. Later launches under a modernised, marketing-led and R&D-driven management structure include the domestic market's first Japanese-style unsweetened green tea, the first tea to carry four national health food efficacy approvals, the first aseptic cold-filled PET bottled tea made with 100 percent Taiwanese four-season spring tea leaves, the first unsweetened black tea to obtain health food efficacy certification, and a barley tea made with imported Japanese barley that leads its segment on an unsweetened formulation. Each of these has been extended into a family of related drinks. The company states a corporate philosophy of continuous improvement and innovation and of contributing well-known drinks that create health, and positions its product development around consumer health. Its output is aimed at the general Taiwanese consumer market across carbonated, isotonic and tea categories in cans and PET bottles.