Meet Zong Qinghou. He started hawking drinks outside a school 25 years ago, and has since become China's wealthiest man as founder and chairman of the Wahaha beverage group that's now searching for acquisitions beyond China, particularly in Japan and Africa. Notoriously, his joint venture...
From 0$ to $100-million in less than a year. It has to be the FMCG success story of the decade thus far. It's the story of Kraft Foods' Mio, the flavoured water enhancer that gave birth to a whole new beverage category, largely...
Leading nutrition scientists from around the world convened at the USDA this week to present the latest research supporting the role of tea in promoting good health. Tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world, next to water. Interest in its potential health...
Marketing and recruiting new drinkers is a priority for beverage makers thanks to slowing demand in the US and Europe as the economic turmoil takes its toll. Whisky is proving particularly lucrative in South Africa...
Coca-Cola's newest drink won't come in a bottle or a can. And people will only need a squirt or two to quench their thirst. Following the lead of Kraft's launch of Mio, the world's largest beverage company is preparing to leverage its scale to stake...
The growth in global demand for functional beverages is fuelled by several consumer trends. The number one trend, identified by IFT’s Food Technology magazine, is ‘real food nutrition’, whereby consumers are choosing to get more of their nutrients from the food and beverages they consume,...
Wine, flavoured malt drinks and premixed cocktails are among alcoholic drinks being packaged in a squeezable pouch, with Nielsen reporting that sales of alcoholic drinks in a pouch increased 153% in a year.
...Adult and/or non-alcoholic soft drinks are an obvious beverage trend - and tapping into this is a new, alcohol-free sparkling white [not referred to as wine] launched by Distell's The House of JC Le Roux. As the liquor giant says, "Now fashionistas have a sophisticated...
Most obvious food-bev innovation rests in packaging - to here's an interesting new concept for beer: French industrial designer, Petit Romain, has dreamed up a square glass container he dubs the Heineken Cube. [Click on pic to enlarge]
...The patented "Gizmo Closure and Delivery System," an innovative, pressurised bottle cap design, out of the US, that infuses a drink with fresh, preservative-free ingredients upon opening, has been utilised for the first time in a new range of iced teas, Tea of a Kind.
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Beginning September 1, the Diet Coke cans will look a little different. The new design, created by Turner Duckworth, first showed up on supermarket shelves last year as a limited-edition package, but it will now become the regular face of the leading soda brand. The...
New product activity in soft drinks appears to be accelerating strongly again with rising levels of global launch activity recorded by Innova Market Insights over the past two years, following more restrained rises in the three years previous to that.
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The number of US children who drink sugar-free beverages has doubled in the past decade, a new study finds - though the health implications of the trend, if any, are unclear.
...US craft brewers have much to celebrate this summer, as their ranks swell and they continue to see double-digit sales growth. Craft breweries are expanding faster than at any time since Prohibition, according to The Huffington Post. Sales increased 14% in the first half...
Diet Coke celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, and like many crossing over into their 30s, the brand can look back on some significant achievements and forward to some daunting challenges as well, says Mintel analyst, Sarah Theodore. [This article has...
Green rooibos tea has higher levels of antioxidants than traditional rooibos, but recent studies are proving that both kinds of rooibos protect against a range of diseases, and that drinking green rooibos is not necessarily better.
...As reported in the recently published Beverage Industry 2012 State of the Industry report, for the first time, energy drinks have outsold bottled water (in the year ending April 15). During that period, energy drinks garnered more than $6.9 billion in sales...
Global launch numbers for lactose-free dairy products more than tripled in the five-year period to the beginning of 2012, according to Innova Market Insights data. The share of total tracked dairy introductions featuring a lactose-free positioning rose from less than 2.5% to 4.5% over the...
Claims about how sports drinks, supplements and shoes/trainerswill help regular or elite athletes train harder and achieve better results are usually based on no or flawed evidence, researchers have revealed.
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