Cola buys into functional beverages

US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola Co. is entering the growing market for functional beverage products containing dietary supplement ingredients such as ginkgo biloba, ginseng and echinacea, Food Chemical News reports. Coca-Cola's acquisition of US beverage company Mad River Traders Inc.​, follows last year's move by Pepsico into the supplemented beverages market with its acquisition of South Beach Beverages Inc., which offers similar "infusion" product lines under the So-Be brand. The Mad River deal also follows in the wake of FDA's Jan. 30 "dear manufacturer" letter in which the agency said it was "concerned that some of the herbal and other botanical ingredients that are being added to conventional foods may cause the food to be adulterated because these added ingredients are not being used in accordance with an approved food additive regulation and may not be GRAS [generally recognized as safe] for their intended use."​ Asked to comment on the regulatory issue, a Coca-Cola spokesperson told Food Chemical News that "we have just acquired Mad River, and it probably is premature for us to comment or speculate on this issue until we've had a chance to really look at the acquisition on many fronts on how we will proceed with Mad River."​ Mad River tea and juice lines contain dietary supplement ingredients such as ginkgo biloba, gotu kola guarana, yohimbe and damiana. Mad River President Marc Johnson said, "[W]ith the power of Coca-Cola​ marketing and the opportunity to work with the Coca-Cola bottling system, we will expand our presence from a regional positioning today to national prominence in the near future."​ Currently, the lines are primarily distributed in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northwest. Source: Food Chemical News​, May 21, 2001