Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Cordials & Syrup Drinks (Singapore)

Cordials & syrup drinks: what's actually in it?

A cordial is a concentrated syrup you dilute with water before drinking. The bottle you buy is not the drink — it is the concentrate, and the ingredient list and nutrition panel on this page are for the cordial as sold, undiluted, unless a row is flagged otherwise. A typical serving is 1 part cordial to 4–9 parts water, depending on the brand, so the sugars in your glass are a fraction of the sugars in the bottle — but the bottle is what the list describes.

This page covers cordials, syrups and concentrates for diluting sold in Singapore: fruit cordials (Ribena, F&N, Asia Farm, Sunquick), rose syrups (Rose Brand, F&N Rose), zero-sugar syrups (Zerup), bar syrups (Monin) and dessert syrups (Hershey's). Ready-to-drink juices, sodas and packet drinks are not in scope — they have their own pages — and neither are medicinal syrups (cough syrups) or honey. This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick.

The dilution trap: two cordials can look alike on the shelf and behave very differently in the glass. Ribena tells you to dilute 1 part cordial with 7 parts water; Sunquick says 1 part to 9; Asia Farm says 1 part to 6; F&N sellers say 1 part to 4. The same 72 g of sugar per 100 ml in the bottle becomes about 9 g per 100 ml in a 1:7 glass and about 7 g in a 1:9 glass. Read the dilution instruction on the bottle, not just the nutrition panel.

The headline, in 30 seconds

• Most cordials start with sugar, not fruit. Ribena Blackcurrant Fruit Cordial lists sucrose first, then water, then blackcurrant juice at 25%. F&N Cordial Rose lists sugar first and contains no fruit juice at all — it is sugar, flavouring, preservative, acid and colourings. Rose Brand Syrup Rose is sugar, water and 0.45% rose essence.
• The exception with real fruit first is Asia Farm Soursop — water first, then refined cane sugar, then soursop puree. Asia Farm Mango is water, sugar, then mango juice concentrate. Neither is sugar-free; the fruit is there, but sugar is still the second ingredient.
• Sunquick is the page's biggest gap. It is on sale at FairPrice in Orange, Tropical and Mango (700 ml) and on Shopee Singapore in eight flavours, but FairPrice publishes no ingredient section for any of them, and the lists circulating online are for the Danish/European concentrate (50% juice) or the Malaysian 330 ml format — neither is verified as the Singapore 700 ml pack. All eight flavours stay seen-but-not-verified until a Singapore pack is photographed.
• Zero-sugar syrups swap sugar for sweeteners, not for fruit. Zerup (a Singapore brand) lists filtered water, flavouring, stabiliser (INS 415), sucralose and acesulfame K, plus preservatives E211 and E223 — no sugar, no fruit juice. Its Cane Sugar variant uses "sugar flavouring" instead of fruit flavouring.
• Bar and dessert syrups are the most concentrated of all. Monin Grenadine (flagged UK/EU list) is 74.5 g sugars per 100 ml as sold; Hershey's Chocolate Syrup (flagged US list) is 50.19 g sugars per 100 g as sold, with 50.04 g of that stated as added sugars.
• F&N's nutrition figures look diluted, not as sold. FairPrice prints 43 kcal and 10.8 g sugars per 100 ml for F&N Cordial Rose — far below what a sugar-first cordial contains undiluted. The page does not state the basis, so the figure is quoted as printed and flagged, not treated as an as-sold figure. Ribena's FairPrice figures (291 kcal, 72.0 g sugars per 100 ml) are consistent with the undiluted cordial and are treated as as-sold.
• No Nutri-Grade is quoted anywhere on this page. No official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on any of the cordial listings checked in this pass, so none is quoted and none has been assigned. (Cordials are within the scope of Singapore's Nutri-Grade measures as concentrates, but a grade must be printed on the pack to be quoted here.)

At a glance

Panelled with verbatim lists: 9 products. Of these, 5 are from Singapore retailer ingredient sections or Singapore brand sites (Ribena, F&N Rose, Rose Brand, Asia Farm Soursop, Zerup ×2 rows), 1 is from matching Singapore seller descriptions (Asia Farm Mango — flagged), and 2 are flagged non-SG lists (Monin Grenadine from UK/EU listings, Hershey's Chocolate Syrup from a US spec sheet — the Singapore packs are not verified). Seen-but-not-verified: 52 products/flavours — see the list below.

Prices are deliberately not shown here: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Fruit cordials — the supermarket shelf

Rose syrups & rose cordials

Zero-sugar syrups

Bar & dessert syrups — flagged non-SG lists

The two rows below are panelled from non-Singapore sources because no Singapore retailer publishes an ingredient section for them. They are not presented as the Singapore pack lists — the Singapore packs need photos.

Sunquick — inventoried, not panelled

Sunquick is the most visible gap on this page. FairPrice lists Sunquick Cordials — Orange, Tropical and Mango (700 ml), all Malaysia origin, Halal, "Less Sugar", dilute 1 part with 9 parts water — but publishes no ingredient section and no nutrition section for any of them. Shopee Singapore lists Sunquick concentrate in 300 ml (Blackcurrant, Mandarin, Lemon, Mixed Mango, Orange, Tropical) and 700 ml Jumbo (Blackcurrant, Mandarin, Lemon, Mixed Mango, Exotic, Orange, Tropical). No verifiable Singapore-pack list was retrieved for any flavour:

• Danish/European Sunquick concentrate lists (multiple retailers): "Sugar, orange / mango / mandarin juice from concentrate (50%), acidity regulator (citric acid), flavourings (with MILK substances), stabiliser (pectin, cellulose gum, guar gum), vitamin C, antioxidant (sulphur dioxide)" — a 50%-juice concentrate. The Singapore 700 ml is Malaysia origin and labelled "Less Sugar", so this European list must not be presented as the Singapore pack.
• Middle East / Gulf Sunquick 840 ml lists: "Sugar, orange juice from concentrate (min 25%), water, acidity regulators (citric acid, potassium citrate), natural orange flavourings with milk substances, stabilisers (pectin, cellulose gum, guar gum), vitamin C, preservatives (sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate, sulphur dioxide), colours (beta-carotene, apocarotenal)" — a 25%-juice version, again not the Singapore pack.
• Shopee Singapore Sunquick Orange 330 ml description gives a partial list only — "Sugar 6.9%, Concentrated Orange juice 0.9% (Equivalent to Orange juice 5.0%), Stabilizer (INS 412, INS 440, INS 466), Antioxidant (INS 300, INS 330), Preservative Added (INS 200, INS 211, INS 220), Artificial Colour Added (INS 160a(i), INS 160…" — truncated mid-list, so it cannot be panelled as a complete verbatim list.

All eight Singapore Sunquick flavours (Orange, Tropical, Mango, Mandarin, Lemon, Blackcurrant, Mixed Mango, Exotic) are in seen-but-not-verified until Singapore packs are photographed. Malaysian-market Sunquick variants also seen online but with no Singapore sale evidence — Rose Lychee, Sarsaparilla, Pink Guava & Strawberries, Mixed Berry, Ice Lemon Tea — are listed separately below.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

• F&N Cordial — Orange, Sarsi (Sarsaparilla), Grape, Black Currant, Rut B (Root Beer) (2 L) — sold in Singapore (FairPrice lists Orange; Shopee Singapore lists all five flavours). FairPrice publishes no ingredient section for Orange, and no Singapore list was retrieved for the other four. A Malaysian retailer list for F&N Cordial Sarsi ("Sugar, Contains coloring substances, Flavoring, Preservatives (contains sulfur dioxide and acid regulator E330), Food conditioner (permitted), Food additives derived from plant and synthetic sources") is a MY-market list, not quoted as the Singapore pack. Needs Singapore pack photos.
• Sunquick Cordials — Orange, Tropical, Mango, Mandarin, Lemon, Blackcurrant, Mixed Mango, Exotic (700 ml / 300 ml) — see the Sunquick section above. No Singapore-pack list retrieved for any flavour.
• Fairprice Cordial Juice — Orange (2 L) — FairPrice house brand, Malaysia origin, listed at FairPrice with no ingredient section and no nutrition section. Needs a pack photo.
• Asia Farm — Fruit Punch, Barley Syrup, Rose Syrup, Apple, Blueberry, Honeydew, Lychee, Lime, Blackcurrant, Orange, Pink Guava, Pineapple, Raspberry, Sarsi Syrup, Winter Melon, Bird Nest, Cranberry, Calamansi, Lemon (1 L / 2 L) — Asia Farm's Singapore catalogue (asiafarm.com.sg) lists all of these; FairPrice lists Fruit Punch, Barley and Rose Syrup among others, and Shopee Singapore lists Rose Syrup, Honeydew, Blueberry, Blackcurrant and Lychee. Only Soursop (FairPrice) and Mango (Shopee, flagged) are panelled above. The rest need Singapore pack lists.
• Monin Syrup — French Vanilla, Caramel, Green Mint, Butterscotch (700 ml) — listed at FairPrice (marketplace seller Honey-Land) with no ingredient sections. Monin publishes lists on its global site, but no Singapore-pack list was retrieved for these flavours.
• Hershey's Chocolate Syrup — Special Dark (623 g) — listed at FairPrice with no ingredient section; no list retrieved.
• Rose's Lime Juice / Lime Cordial (1 L) — the classic lime cordial. No Singapore supermarket listing was found; it is available in Singapore only through import resellers (Desertcart Singapore, via Amazon Singapore). UK, Canadian and US lists all differ (UK: water, lime juice from concentrate 5% as diluted, sugar, citric acid, flavourings, sodium metabisulphite, colours carotenes/green S; Canada: water, sugar/glucose-fructose, concentrated lime juice, citric acid, natural flavour, sulphites, colour; US: water, high fructose corn syrup, lime juice concentrate, sodium metabisulfite, natural flavors, Yellow 5, Blue 1). No Singapore-pack list exists to choose between them.
• Rooh Afza Rose Syrup (700 ml, Hamdard) — listed at FairPrice via Dashmesh. Indian, Pakistani and Gulf lists disagree with each other (and one retrieved listing pasted a soursop list by mistake), so no list is quoted. Needs a Singapore-pack photo.
• Dragon Coin Syrup — Rose — seen on FairPrice cordial listings; no ingredient section retrieved.
• Kirei Japanese Pro-Use Sakura Syrup (250 g), Laobanniang Bentong Ginger Syrup (500 ml), Captain Salty Lemon Syrup (600 ml), Gum Tea Premium Honey Lemon (1 kg) — all listed in FairPrice's cordials & syrups category; no ingredient sections retrieved for any of them.
• Sunquick Malaysian-market variants — Rose Lychee, Sarsaparilla, Pink Guava & Strawberries, Mixed Berry, Ice Lemon Tea — seen on Malaysian/Australian listings; no Singapore sale evidence found in this pass, so they are not counted as Singapore shelf products.
• Vimto cordial/squash and Robinsons squash — no Singapore sale evidence found in this pass (no FairPrice, Cold Storage, Shopee Singapore or Lazada listing retrieved). They are UK squash brands, not Singapore shelf items on current evidence.
• Ribena Blackcurrant & Strawberry Juice Cordial — appears in a 2019 Singapore study's product list, but no current Singapore retail listing was found in this pass; not counted as on sale.
• Giant, Sheng Siong, Don Don Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms and RedMart cordial ranges — not inventoried with verified lists in this pass; the same F&N / Ribena / Sunquick / Asia Farm products are expected on those shelves, but that is an assumption, not a check. In-store and pack-photo checks are still open for all of them.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the table are as sold, per 100 ml, unless a row is flagged otherwise. Read the basis before comparing: a cordial's as-sold figures describe the undiluted syrup in the bottle. At the printed dilution (Ribena 1:7, Sunquick 1:9, Asia Farm 1:6, F&N about 1:4), the sugars in a glass are roughly the as-sold figure divided by the total parts (e.g. Ribena's 72.0 g sugars per 100 ml as sold becomes about 9 g per 100 ml in a 1:7 glass). Hershey's is tabled per 100 g, not per 100 ml, because its source gives per-100 g figures and it is used by the spoon, not diluted.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

Total vs added sugars: most Singapore packs list total sugars, not added sugars. A total-sugars figure is never labelled here as "added sugar". The one exception on this page is Hershey's, whose US spec sheet states added sugars separately (50.04 g of 50.19 g total sugars per 100 g). The ingredient list remains the evidence for added sugar (sucrose, sugar, high fructose corn syrup) versus naturally occurring sugars.

Nutri-Grade: no official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on any cordial listing checked in this pass, so none is quoted and none has been assigned. A 2019 Singapore study assigned grades to some of these products for experimental purposes (e.g. Ribena Blackcurrant and Strawberry Juice Cordial D, Sunquick Lemon Squash Concentrate A); those were study-assigned grades, not pack-printed Nutri-Grade, and are not quoted as Nutri-Grade here.

Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used: the pack and the retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree. Figures marked "not stated" were not in the source retrieved; they are not estimated, borrowed from another variant, or copied across flavours. Note the conflict on Ribena: Open Food Facts lists 116 kcal and 28.8 g sugars per 100 ml for the same barcode — figures consistent with a diluted drink, not the undiluted cordial — while FairPrice's Singapore ingredient-section page lists 291 kcal and 72.0 g sugars per 100 ml as sold. The FairPrice figures are used here; the Open Food Facts figures are recorded in the research notes, not the table.

Observed numbers, no verdict: Ribena lists 72.0 g sugars per 100 ml as sold and Monin Grenadine lists 74.5 g sugars per 100 ml as sold — both are sugar-first concentrates, and their as-sold sugar figures are close. Hershey's lists 50.19 g sugars per 100 g as sold, of which 50.04 g is stated as added sugars. F&N Rose's printed 10.8 g sugars per 100 ml is not comparable with the as-sold rows above, because its basis is not stated and the figure is consistent with a diluted serving. Sodium where stated is 20 mg per 100 ml (Ribena), 16.9 mg per 100 ml (Monin Grenadine) and 38.12 mg per 100 g (Hershey's).

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 ml (or per-100 g) nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Rose Brand Syrup Rose, Asia Farm Fruit Cordial Soursop, Asia Farm Fruit Cordial Mango, Zerup Zero Sugar Cane Sugar Syrup, Zerup Zero Sugar flavoured syrups, any Sunquick flavour, any other F&N Cordial flavour, Fairprice Cordial Juice Orange, any other Monin flavour, Hershey's Special Dark, Rose's Lime Juice, Rooh Afza, or any other product in seen-but-not-verified. Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here.

How to read a cordial label — the jargon, in plain English

Cordial / squash / concentrate

The same idea under different names: a sweetened, flavoured syrup you dilute with water (or soda, or milk for rose syrups). "Squash" is the British term; "cordial" is used in Singapore and Malaysia; "concentrate" usually means a higher fruit-juice share. None of these words guarantees a particular juice percentage — the ingredient list does.

Dilution ratio (1:4, 1:6, 1:7, 1:9)

How much water to add to one part cordial. It changes the drink, not the bottle: the nutrition panel describes the bottle. Divide the as-sold sugars by the total parts (cordial + water) for a rough per-glass figure.

Sucrose / sugar / refined cane sugar

All added sugar. "Sucrose" is the chemical name for table sugar; "refined cane sugar" is sugar from cane. In a cordial, the first ingredient is usually one of these.

High fructose corn syrup

A liquid sweetener made from corn starch, first ingredient in Hershey's Chocolate Syrup. It is an added sugar, not a fruit ingredient.

Sucralose / acesulfame K (acesulfame potassium)

Intense sweeteners used in zero-sugar syrups (Zerup). They sweeten without sugar and without calories from sugar; they are not sugar, and a product using them is not automatically unsweetened in taste.

E211 (sodium benzoate) / E202 (potassium sorbate) / E223 (sodium metabisulphite)

Preservatives. E223 and other sulphites must be declared because some people are sulphite-sensitive — Ribena's list carries a "contains sulphur dioxide" note for this reason.

E330 (citric acid)

An acidity regulator that gives tartness; it occurs naturally in citrus fruit and is added to almost every cordial on this page.

E102, E110, E122, E129, E150ii, E155, E163

Colourings. E102 tartrazine (yellow), E110 sunset yellow, E122 carmosine (red), E129 allura red, E150ii caramel, E155 brown HT, E163 anthocyanins (from grape skins — the colour in Ribena). A cordial's colour is usually added, not from the fruit.

E415 (xanthan gum)

A stabiliser/thickener that keeps a syrup smooth and stops ingredients separating. In Zerup it is the only thickener; in Asia Farm Soursop it is the "permitted stabilizer".

"No added sugar" vs "zero sugar"

"No added sugar" means no sugar was added during manufacture — the product may still contain sugars from fruit. "Zero sugar" (Zerup) means the product contains no sugar at all and is sweetened with intense sweeteners instead. Neither phrase means "unsweetened".

Nutri-Grade

Singapore's mandatory front-of-pack grading (A–D) for pre-packaged beverages, which covers powders and concentrates including cordials. A grade is only quoted on this site when it is printed on the pack or the official listing — none was found printed for any cordial checked here.

What this page is not

• Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. Sugar-first cordials, water-first cordials and zero-sugar syrups are different products, and this page does not rank them.
• Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
• Not complete. Sunquick — one of the biggest cordial brands in Singapore — is entirely unverified on this page, for the reasons in the Sunquick section, not hidden. Giant, Sheng Siong, Donki, Mustafa, Meidi-Ya, Le Petit Depot, Little Farms and RedMart were not inventoried with verified lists in this pass, and their cordial ranges still need in-store and pack-photo checks.

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: FairPrice ingredient sections (Ribena Blackcurrant Fruit Cordial, F&N Cordial Rose, Rose Brand Syrup Rose, Asia Farm Fruit Cordial Soursop; FairPrice cordials & syrups category page for inventory); Shopee Singapore listings (Asia Farm Mango ingredient descriptions from two sellers, F&N Cordial flavour range, Sunquick 300 ml flavour range, Rose's Lime Juice availability); Zerup Singapore brand site zerup.com and Singapore retailers Robinsons Singapore / KrisShop / Jewel Coffee (Zerup lists); UK/EU retailer and foodservice listings for Monin Grenadine (flagged non-SG); Hershey's US foodservice spec sheet (flagged non-SG); Open Food Facts (Ribena cordial SG barcode, secondary, with conflicting diluted-basis nutrition noted); Asia Farm Singapore catalogue (asiafarm.com.sg) for the brand's flavour range; Malaysian retailer lists for F&N Sarsi and Sunquick (flagged non-SG, not panelled); Desertcart Singapore for Rose's Lime Juice availability. Cold Storage was searched and no cordial ingredient data was retrieved — Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition section added 5–6 November 2026: figures are standardised to per 100 ml (Hershey's per 100 g, as its source gives) where the source gives per-100 figures; per-serving-only figures are labelled as such and are not converted; sugars are total sugars as printed, not added sugars, unless the source states added sugars; salt = sodium × 2.5. Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled.