Nestle and Coca-Cola have agreed to end their Nestea iced tea joint venture after 16 years and pursue separate strategies in the fast-changing bottled drinks market.
The companies formed Beverage Partners Worldwide in 2001 to sell Nestea around the world but the brand has faced fierce competition from Lipton iced tea, which is sold by a venture between Unilever and PepsiCo.
Consumers are also moving away from sweetened bottled drinks toward water due to concerns about health and the environment.
Nestle announced a revamp of the Nestea brand last month, changing its formula and packaging. The new fruit-flavored Nestea drinks are made with sugar and stevia and have no corn syrup, artificial colors and flavors, nor GMO ingredients.
“The ready-to-drink tea market has evolved, and Nestle believes the time is right to develop Nestea independently,” the company said on Friday, announcing the end of the venture that had already been scaled back to just Europe and Canada in 2012.
Nestle said on Friday that Coke would retain a license to make and sell Nestea in Canada, Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria.The Nestle Waters division, which manages the brand in several countries including the United States, will also manage Nestea in European countries not affected by the licensing agreements with Coke, it said.
Source: Reuters via Fortune
The Coca-Cola Co. has promoted Evguenia (Jeny) Stoichkova to president of global ventures, effective Jan. 1, 2023. Ms. Stoichkova joined Coca-Cola Bulgaria in 2004 and was most recently the president of the company’s Eurasia & Middle East division, a role she has held since 2021.
US-based Perfect Day, is partnering with Onego Bio, which specializes in creating animal-free eggs, aiming to accelerate the timeline to bring the eggs to the market. The business, with the use of its technology, plans to commercialize animal-free ovalbumin, the most abundant egg white protein extracted through precision fermentation.
Food waste costs the EU €143 billion per year (US$141.7 billion), with a report by Feedback EU raising the alarm of how it’s vital to reduce waste from farm to fork 50% by 2030 and the only way this will be achieved is by enforcing a mandatory directive forcing the food industry to do better and retailers to pay a tax of food waste.
