FiE 2025: Nexira on botanical beverage innovations beyond energy drinks
15 Jan 2026 | Nexira
At FiE 2025, Julie Impérato, marketing & communication manager at Nexira, and Charlotte Wallart, product manager, explained how botanical extracts are shaping the next generation of functional beverages. Wallart explained that while this trend began with natural energy drinks, the company is now seeing an increasingly diverse range of wellness claims, including antioxidant properties and immune support. Impérato highlighted opportunities in functional drinks with prebiotics for gut health and beyond.
This is Yolande van Gaal from Nutrition Insight.
I'm here with Julie Imperrato and Charlotte Rola from Nexira.
Thank you both for joining us today.
And I'm curious, we're here at Food Ingredients Europe in Paris, and I know that you are showcasing a refreshed range of botanical extracts that you've recently introduced.
How do you see these botanicals shaping the future of functional beverages?
And what types of health positioning or storytelling are brands most eager to build around those extracts?
Next year we will address a wide range of botanicals for functional beverages.
We see that this trend of functional beverages is really booming.
We have a lot of launches with botanicals.
And we address different trends.
It started with energy drink.
We see that it's the majority of launches on the market.
We have natural extract natural caffeine, for example, green tea, ginseng, etc.
But we also see that functional beverages are diversifying a lot in terms of wellness benefits.
So we see antioxidant properties, immunity, etc.
So yeah, it's really.
OK, interesting.
And from your perspective, what are some of the biggest shifts in how brands are now designing functional drinks and how is the Nexa ingredient portfolio enabling that next wave of innovation?
We do see our customers asking more for naturality.
It's really, you know, they were focusing on health benefits for these functional beverages, but now they also want to add naturality to the beverage, and we know that it's a really important point for consumers.
It's how they build trust towards the brands.
So naturality is really important, natural plant-based ingredients.
More and more by our customers.
OK, interesting.
And how important is it for formulators to integrate functionality, things like gut health, but also sensory quality into a unified beverage concept instead of just treating all those three as different tools?
I think good question.
In fact, the taste is really important.
We see more and more products with.
And healthy properties at Nexa we always keep in mind that people need to buy once, but they need also to buy twice and again, and it's with the taste.
If you don't have the taste, you cannot have the perfect product.
So we have versatile ingredients that have some functional benefits such as mouth feel, roundness, for example, in a beverage.
It's really important with acacia, for example.
We have also gum for the mouth of plant-based drink or whatever, and we also have functionality because we want it to be tasty and healthy.
And beyond things like digestive support, where do you see prebiotic fibers expanding?
Are there things like new health benefits or everyday hydration formats really working?
When you talk about prebiotics, that's true that you associate the prebiotic with digestive health, but we know also that the gut is really, it's kind of a hub in your body, so more and more consumers also link the gut with, you know, skin health, brain health, immunity, and so on.
So it's something that we are working on.
We do think that the gut is also a way to reach other health benefits.
And looking ahead, can you highlight some major trends that you expect will most influence beverage innovation over the next 3 to 5 years, and how Nexa is investing to stay ahead in that?
I think as Charlotte, tasty.
Healthy.
It's something really important to have a tasty and healthy food products, food and beverage products.
So we see that low sugar, but also natural beverages are asking consumers, they want more, so you need to be tasty, healthy, low sugar with health benefits.
So we are working currently on the diversification.
On our natural ingredients range to address different health benefits and for example, we already have the ginseng in our range, but we are working on adding a new adaptogen in the range.
Very.
Good luck with it.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
