I believe there remains lots more growth potential for energy drinks internationally, but the latest US figures show a distinct deceleration.
Beverage Digest reports a drop from 18.6% retail volume growth in the first quarter of 2012 to just 3.6% in the first quarter of 2013.
Monster and Red Bull were still up in high single figures, though, with Monster holding a 41% volume share and Red Bull on 28%.
Two contrasting news items about caffeine struck me last week.
One was a growing US debate about the possible requirement of caffeine content labelling and even a recommended daily caffeine intake cap of 400mg.
The other was a headline that “Caffeine proves vital ingredient in scientists’ human cloning breakthrough”. Apparently, caffeine was needed to turn patient skin cells back into embryonic stem cells.
The level of investment by multinationals in emerging markets is often measured in billions. Only rarely do I see billions being invested in one region of one country.
Coca-Cola has already invested $400 million in Florida over the past five years. Now it has agreed to buy all the fruit produced by 25,000 acres of new orange trees for the next 20 years, representing a value of $2,000 million.
That’s a substantial pledge by any measure.
So many great product innovations fail because they are ahead of their time. Most aren’t given a second chance. Maybe the time has come for mid-calorie carbonates after earlier false dawns.
Zenith’s UK Soft Drinks Industry Conference last week had its highest ever attendance, despite companies generally cutting back on events. We had a tremendous programme, but were also extremely fortunate with our timing. The day coincided with important news from numerous speakers:
• Coca-Cola’s global commitment to new initiatives on tackling obesity
• The UK Government’s publication of evidence to support a soft drinks sustainability roadmap
• The British Soft Drinks Association’s publication of its 2013 UK Soft Drinks Report
• Innocent founder Richard Reed’s handover to a new team and offer to back other entrepreneurs through jamjar investments.
April was a busy month for food and drink mergers and acquisitions, with 47 appearing on the bevblog.net database, which has a link on the right of this page. Four featured values in excess of $1,000 million:
- $13,600 million for Thermo Fisher Scientific to buy Life Technologies, both based in the United States
- €7,500 million on Joh A Benckiser’s purchase of D E Master Blenders 1753, formerly known as Douwe Egberts
- $2,950 million for Archer Daniels Midland to acquire Australia’s GrainCorp
- €2,300 million sales for Refresco’s European soft drinks merger with Gerber Emig.
The sectors covered were very diverse with 11 transactions in alcohol, 7 in soft drinks, 6 in dairy, 4 in meat and 3 each in hot drinks, ingredients and packaging.
23 took place within national borders and 24 were international. 26 countries were involved overall. As ever the United States featured in the most at 16, followed by France on 8, the United Kingdom on 7, the Netherlands on 5 and Germany on 4.
The Montreal Gazette recently contained some useful facts about bottled water in Canada:
- 91% of bottled water consumers in Quebec drink tap water too. They have tap water at home and bottled water on the go.
- Over 90% of Canada’s bottled water is from deep springs rather than municipal water.
- The average bottle travels 250 kilometres from source to shelf, compared to over 2,400 kilometres for fresh fruit and vegetables or most packaged consumer goods.
- 70% of plastic beverage containers in Quebec are recycled.
Which country is this ? Its recent advertisement in the Financial Times promoted seven attributes.
Three were economic and social – easy access, low tax and good healthcare.
Four were about natural resources – mineral waters, mineral springs, spa tradition and excellent climate.
I don’t suppose you guessed. It was Bulgaria.
I’ve waited a long time for this. Checking each week. Now it’s back. My favourite chart.
I like it because it summarises the state of the world in a single line. The line shows overall global economic growth.
It was steady at +4% in the run up to 2007. Then it fell to -3% in mid 2008, recovering remarkably quickly to +4% again by mid-2009. Ever since, however, it has slipped progressively to just +2% by the end of 2012.
Here it is, with acknowledgement to The Economist magazine on 30th March 2013.
