WILD Launches Fruit & Veggie Drinks

Although this ACE drink category has been a top seller, its popularity now appears to be waning. During the first half of 2007, sales of multivitamin/ACE drinks on the German market were 12.5 percent lower than in the previous year.

03/12/07 One of the most successful beverage innovations of the 1990's was the development of a category of healthy, vitamin-enriched orange-carrot ACE drinks. However, more recent figures have indicated a drop in sales, especially in the German non-alcoholic beverage market. In response to consumers' unabated demand for products with added health benefits, WILD has now developed new fruit and vegetable combinations: In addition to carrots, WILD uses pumpkin and bell peppers for a healthy, tasty, change-of-pace alternative to traditional fruit juice drinks.

Following the sweeping success of the multivitamin drinks that appeared on the market in the 1980's, the 1990's saw WILD's introduction of the next stage in development. In 1993, WILD presented European beverage manufacturers with an orange-carrot drink enriched with pro-vitamin A, as well as vitamins C and E. Although this ACE drink category has been a top seller, its popularity now appears to be waning. During the first half of 2007, sales of multivitamin/ACE drinks on the German market were 12.5 percent lower than in the previous year (Source: GfK ConsumerScan).

Whereas the former practice was to add the separate vitamins to ACE drinks, WILD's innovative Fruit & Veggie Drinks now incoroporate their vitamins from natural sources, thereby revitalizing a fresh momentum for the market segment. With their natural C and E vitamins, the new Fruit & Veggie Drinks follow the recent trends for healthy, natural ingredients in beverages. WILD takes natural provitamin A from carrot juice concentrate, and vitamin C from citrus juice concentrate or acerola cherry. Vitamin E is derived by concentrating soybean oil, a process that eliminates its typical, "wheaty"
aftertaste.

While ACE and multivitamin drinks were typically bright orange, WILD's Fruit & Veggie Drinks introduce a whole new range of color variations from light yellow to dark red. The same innovation and variety applies to taste. Fruit and vegetable combinations comprising over 30 percent juice, such as grapefruit-orange-yellow carrot or apricot-peach-carrot-pumpkin, or a mixture of red berries and red peppers, produce drinks with highly diverse and agreeable flavors.