Twinings is taking on flavoured water players with a cold water infusion that claims to be an industry first.
Launched this weekend after two years of development, the new Cold In’fuse teabags contain botanicals and small pieces of fruit designed to release flavour in cold water rather than hot.
The product will roll out first to the out of home market, followed by a retail launch in July.
Cold In’fuse comes in three flavours: watermelon, strawberry & mint; passionfruit, mango & blood orange; and blueberry, apple & blackcurrant.
Containing no sugar and fewer than 10 calories per serving, the launch is aimed at consumers who are looking for an alternative to plain water but want to avoid added sugar or artificial sweeteners.
A starter kit containing plastic bottle (pictured) and three bags comes at £9.99 and a refill pack of 12 bags will retail at £3.79, making it more expensive than Twinings’ hot tea products.
Twinings stressed it was not competing in the tea category, but was taking on flavoured water brands such as Volvic, whose Touch of Fruit brand retails at £1 per 1.5-litre bottle. The Twinings product is also considerably cheaper than PepsiCo’s more high-end Drinkfinity brand, which costs £6.50 for a pack of four pods designed to be released into cold water.
Similarly to Drinkfinity, Twinings has designed a reusable bottle especially for the drink to curb the waste caused by single-use plastic bottles. All of its packaging is 100% recyclable.
Cold In’fuse will be supported a £4m campaign later on in the year, which will include outdoor advertising, digital elements such as working with influencers, and experiential marketing at festivals to appeal to its target market of millennials.
The move into the flavoured water category could prove lucrative for Twinings, which lost £2.9m in sales last year [Nielsen, 52 w/e 30 December 2017] as it battled the rise of own label and the decline of black tea.
By contrast, the flavoured water market is booming. Supermarket shoppers took home an extra 33.5 million litres of flavoured water over the past year, pushing value sales of still and sparkling up 11.1% and 11.9% respectively to a total of £211.9m [Kantar Worldpanel 52 w/e 5 November 2017].
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