Page 33 - Food and Drink Business Magazine May 2019

ORGANICS & NATURALS
“A wild ride” is how Naked Life CEO and founder David Andrew describes the two years since he created the range of soft drinks free from sugar, artificial flavouring and colouring.
As an entrepreneur and former general manager of a large sugar replacement company, Andrew could see a market opportunity and took it. He says: “A lot of Australia is just catching on to the sugar-free trend. We’ve come a long way in the last three or four years with the availability of sugar-free products that don’t taste horrible and aren’t full of artificial everything.”
The soft drinks are a proprietary blend of 100 per
Naked Life recently launched Australia’s first natural and sugar-free tonic water, available through Dan Murphy's.
“The tonic water was a longer time coming. I’d been trying to make tonic water basically from the beginning but it’s such a difficult thing to get right as it’s a very complex drink and also the gin drinker is a very particular drinker. It basically had to be perfect.”
TAKING ON THE KIDS
Naked Life is embarking on was its biggest project yet by taking the sugar-free movement to children. Its No Nasties Icicle project, aims to remove 500 tonnes of sugar
Naked Life tonic waters were ‘difficult to get right’ because gin drinkers are ‘very particular’ says founder, David Andrew.
“ It’s been a bit of a wild ride trying to make it all happen on a shoestring budget, but it’s been a great experience.”
cent natural Stevia extract, monk fruit extract and erythritol. They are also free from phosphoric acid, which is a key difference from other colas and natural soft drinks, Andrew says.
“It’s been a bit of a wild ride trying to make it all happen on a shoestring budget, but it’s been a great experience and it’s been really validating to know that the market is starting to respond.”
Naked Life is available in Woolworths Metro stores, independent supermarkets, hospitals, universities as well as health stores across Australia.
Andrew says he was “really impressed” with the Woolworths Metro team as they were the first big supermarket to take them on. “They loved the taste of our product. They’d seen another couple of products that didn’t have a significant taste profile so it really just went from there. They were very progressive and moved very quickly.”
each year from Australian diets with its Sugar Free-zies range of natural, sugar-free icy poles.
“Four thousand tonnes of sugar are put into Australian kids every year through other icy pole sticks. It looks like ten of those large mining dump trucks that carry 300 tonnes,” Andrew says.
When Andrew saw those statistics, he decided to try to make a difference. He invested $750,000 to import the manufacturing machinery needed to make the iceblocks in Melbourne.
With backing from Woolworths, Naked Life reached $200,000 sales in the first month. “Woolworths was fantastic,” Andrew says the supermarket was “so fast” to see the value in the product for consumers.
The move has paid off for Naked Life. It is on target to reach sales beyond $2.5 million this financial year. ✷
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | May 2019 | Food&Drink business | 33