Coca-Cola’s BodyArmor is jumping into the fast-growing rapid hydration sports drink segment with a new product called Flash I.V., the company has confirmed to BD. BodyArmor filed for the Flash I.V. trademark in January and will ship the product in the US regionally early next month by way of some Coca-Cola bottlers, BodyArmor CEO Federico Muyshondt said in an interview. The company will take the product nationwide in January of 2024. The emerging rapid hydration market, being forged by brands including Grupo Pisa’s Electrolit, PepsiCo’s Gatorlyte, and Abbott’s Pedialyte Sport, has reached between...

Natural Products Expo West was nearly back to pre-pandemic form this year with more than 3,000 exhibitors and 65,000 attendees. The show, held last week in Anaheim, California, hosts the vanguard of consumer health and wellness trends, mostly in packaged food and beverage. Had you been at Expo West in 1999, you would have seen bottled organic tea brand Honest in its infancy, a dozen years before Coca-Cola would eventually acquire the company in full from co-founder and fair trade tea evangelist Seth Goldman. While many brands at the show will fail, they often still represent trends that will one day go mainstream and generate meaningful growth, usually at premium pricing. As a result, Expo West is a magnet for strategic companies, private equity investors, distributors, and retailers looking for the next big trend or growth brand. With all of this in mind, BD walked the show floor — 10 football fields in size — for three days, spending most of that time in the “Hot Products” zones, where the smallest and newest companies exhibit. Here’s what caught our attention:

Liquid I.V., the powdered water enhancer acquired by Unilever in 2020, is closing in on $1 billion in net sales, according to the company. The brand will reach the milestone in the “near future,” the company said, while declining to define that timeframe. The “hydration multiplier,” which promises to hydrate as much as 2.5 times faster than water and is used by some consumers as a hangover remedy, is the largest single-serve drink mix brand on the market with a...