Household Ingredients Compared  ›  Milk Tea — Ready-to-Drink (Singapore)

Milk tea (ready-to-drink): what's actually in it?

This page covers bottled and canned ready-to-drink (RTD) milk tea sold in Singapore — the chilled/ambient bottles and cans and the packet (tetra) drinks you pick up ready to drink. Freshly made café and bubble-tea-shop drinks are out of scope, and so are instant milk-tea powders/sachets (3-in-1 teh tarik, Lipton Milk Tea Latte sachets, Gold Kili, Old Town, Killiney premix sachets and the like): they are a different product — a powder you make up with hot water — and their lists (non-dairy creamer, maltodextrin, instant tea powder) are not RTD lists. They are noted in the inventory below so they are not mistaken for missing RTD products, but they are not panelled here.

A second boundary matters: a flavoured milk with no tea in it is not a milk tea. Pokka Bandung Rose Milk, for example, is a rose-flavoured milk drink, not a milk tea, and is excluded from the panels for that reason. A tea-flavoured soy milk (Marusan Red Tea Soy Milk) sits on the boundary — it has tea, but no dairy milk — and is listed as seen-but-not-verified, not panelled as a milk tea, until its list is verified.

This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick.

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At a glance

ProductTypeFirst ingredientAdded sugar?Pack size (as printed)Country of manufacture (as printed)
Pokka Premium Milk Tea — 500ml bottle (Original)RTD milk tea, bottledWaterYes — sucrose (4th)500mlnot stated
Pokka Premium Earl Grey Milk Tea — 500ml bottleRTD milk tea, bottled, Earl GreyWaterYes — sucrose (4th)500mlMalaysia

Panelled with verbatim lists: 2 products. Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below (at least 5 RTD milk-tea / boundary products, plus the instant-powder range noted as out of scope). No Nutri-Grade was found printed on either panelled product in this pass, so none is quoted; no grade has been assigned. (Open Food Facts shows a computed Nutri-Score D for both Pokka bottles — that is Open Food Facts' own calculation, not a Nutri-Grade printed on the pack, and it is not presented here as a Nutri-Grade.)

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

Ready-to-drink milk tea — bottled

Pokka Premium Milk Tea — 500ml bottle (Original)

Pack size: 500ml · Made in: not stated (as printed)

Ingredients: Water, black tea, milk, sucrose, emulsifier (E473), flavouring, vitamin C.

Water first, then black tea, then milk, then sucrose. One emulsifier (E473, sucrose esters of fatty acids) and a flavouring; vitamin C (ascorbic acid) last. Allergen: milk. Source flag: Open Food Facts, secondary — the world entry (barcode 8888196303813) transcribes this list; the SG Open Food Facts entry for the Earl Grey variant (below) is the one that states "Countries where sold: Singapore" explicitly. Singapore sale of this Original bottle is corroborated by the FairPrice listing "[BCRS] Pokka Premium Bottle Drink — Milk Tea (Original), 24 × 500ml". No FairPrice ingredient section was retrieved for it, so the SG pack itself still needs a photo to confirm the list word-for-word. RTD milk tea Added sugar: sucrose Allergen: milk Open Food Facts, secondary

Pokka Premium Earl Grey Milk Tea — 500ml bottle

Pack size: 500ml · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients: Water, freshly brewed earl grey black tea, milk, sucrose, emulsifiers (E473, E469), flavourings, sodium bicarbonate, ascorbic acid.

The same skeleton as the Original — water, brewed tea, milk, sucrose — but the tea is named as freshly brewed Earl Grey black tea, there are two emulsifiers (E473 and E469, enzymatically hydrolysed carboxymethylcellulose), and sodium bicarbonate (acidity regulator) and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) are listed separately at the end. Labels on the Open Food Facts SG entry: Halal, No preservatives, No colourings. Allergen: milk. Manufactured in Malaysia; countries where sold: Singapore (Open Food Facts SG entry, barcode 8888196305817). RTD milk tea Earl Grey Added sugar: sucrose Allergen: milk Open Food Facts SG, secondary

FairPrice milk-tea shelf — inventory (5–6 November 2026)

FairPrice's milk-tea category listing was the one full retailer shelf retrieved in this pass. It confirms the RTD products below are on sale in Singapore, and it also shows how much of the "milk tea" shelf is instant powder, not RTD — the two must not be merged.

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the table are as sold, per 100 ml, from Open Food Facts transcriptions of the pack nutrition panels (secondary source — the pack and any retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree). Sugars here are total sugars as printed, not added sugars: they include lactose from the milk as well as sucrose. Open Food Facts estimates added sugars at about 3% (sucrose) for both Pokka bottles; that estimate is noted in the research notes and is not presented in the table as a printed added-sugars figure. No official Singapore Nutri-Grade (A–D) was found printed on either panelled product in this pass, so none is quoted here; no grade has been assigned.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Where the source printed salt rather than sodium (Earl Grey), sodium is derived by dividing by 2.5 and is flagged as derived. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

ProductBasisEnergyProteinTotal fatSaturated fatCarbohydrateSugars (total)Sodium (salt equiv.)
Pokka Premium Milk Tea — 500ml (Original)Per 100 ml, as sold (Open Food Facts, secondary)42 kcal (175 kJ)0.6 g0.72 g0.52 g8.32 g7.6 g21.2 mg (salt 0.053 g)
Pokka Premium Earl Grey Milk Tea — 500mlPer 100 ml, as sold (Open Food Facts SG, secondary)39 kcal (164 kJ)0.6 g0.72 g0.52 g7.52 g6.8 g17.2 mg derived (salt 0.043 g as printed)

Observed numbers, no verdict: the Original lists 7.6 g total sugars per 100 ml and the Earl Grey 6.8 g; energy is 42 kcal vs 39 kcal per 100 ml; protein, total fat and saturated fat are the same in both transcriptions (0.6 g, 0.72 g and 0.52 g per 100 ml respectively). Sodium is 21.2 mg per 100 ml for the Original and 17.2 mg (derived from printed salt 0.043 g) for the Earl Grey.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 ml nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Pokka Premium Packet Drink — Milk Tea (Original), Killiney Classic SG Can Drink — Milk Tea, Vita HK Style Milk Tea Packet Drink — Original, Marusan Red Tea Soy Milk, or any Ito En, Kirin, Lipton RTD or bottled pearl milk tea. Their nutrition figures are not estimated here, and the 500ml bottle figures above are not copied onto the packet/can variants.

How to read a milk-tea label — the jargon, in plain English

Ready-to-drink (RTD) vs instant (3-in-1)
RTD milk tea is sold as a finished drink in a bottle, can or packet — water is already the first ingredient. Instant milk tea is a powder (creamer, sugar, instant tea powder, maltodextrin) you mix with hot water. The two have completely different ingredient lists and must not be compared row-for-row.
Sucrose
Ordinary sugar. In both panelled Pokka bottles it is the fourth ingredient, after water, tea and milk. Its presence is what makes these sweetened drinks; "total sugars" on the nutrition panel also includes lactose from the milk, so total sugars (7.6 g / 6.8 g per 100 ml) are higher than the sucrose alone.
E473 (sucrose esters of fatty acids) and E469 (enzymatically hydrolysed carboxymethylcellulose)
Emulsifiers/stabilisers: they keep the milk and tea mixed and stop the drink separating in the bottle. The Original lists E473 only; the Earl Grey lists both E473 and E469.
Sodium bicarbonate (E500)
An acidity regulator (baking soda) — it keeps the drink from tasting too sharp/acidic and helps the milk stay stable in tea. Listed in the Earl Grey, not in the Original.
Ascorbic acid / vitamin C
Listed last in both Pokka bottles. It acts as an antioxidant (it slows flavour/colour change) as well as being vitamin C; its position last means it is present in the smallest amount.
Non-dairy creamer
A powdered fat/protein mix used instead of (or alongside) milk, common in instant sachets and in some flavoured milks (e.g. Pokka Bandung Rose Milk). Neither panelled RTD milk tea lists it — both list real milk.
"No preservatives / no colourings" (label claims)
Claims printed for the Pokka Earl Grey on its Open Food Facts entry. They describe what is not in the list — check the list itself rather than taking the claim alone, and note the claim is not the same as "no added sugar".

What this page is not

Sources and method

Checked 5–6 November 2026 from: FairPrice milk-tea category listing (omni.fairprice.com.sg, milk-tea category — RTD and instant inventory, Killiney/Vita/Pokka packet listings, Marusan listing); Open Food Facts SG (Pokka Premium Earl Grey Milk Tea 500ml, barcode 8888196305817 — ingredients, nutrition, "Countries where sold: Singapore", manufactured Malaysia); Open Food Facts world entry (Pokka Premium Milk Tea 500ml, barcode 8888196303813 — ingredients, nutrition); Shopee SG (Pokka Bandung Rose Milk 500ml listing — used only to exclude it as a non-tea milk drink); F&N Foods Singapore product page (SEASONS Tea range — no milk tea); Stationery World SG / Shopee SG Lipton listings (instant sachets only — used to confirm Lipton's SG milk-tea presence is powder, not RTD). Rate limit: further web searches (Ito En, Kirin, Vita, bubble-tea bottled pearls, FairPrice product pages) and page fetches returned HTTP 429 (too many requests) during this pass and were not retried, per the standing rule not to repeat a blocked browser call. 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 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 (Earl Grey sodium derived from printed salt and flagged). Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled.