Bionade, a German beverage company with growing sales in Australia, plans to take on Coca Cola in the non-alcoholic beverage market and to eventually start manufacturing in Australia.
Bionade GmbH was developed in 1995 in Germany and launched in Australia in 2008. Its original distributor was Jolly Products.
The drink sells approximately 1 million bottles here, with plans to manufacture locally if this number reaches 3 million. Worldwide sales are about 500 million bottles.
It is brewed, organic, and reportedly follows the strict purity requirements that apply to German beer. It also has much lower sugar than other soft drinks.
“In Germany Bionade developed a whole new range of products and it’s now the term for a whole new generation of products,” Karsten Knorr, director at current distributor Drinks Beverage Logistics, told The Australian Financial Review.
The AFR reports that current distributor, whose website advertises Bionade as “ThePost-Coke Drink”, has plans to aggressively grow the brand in Australia at the expense of Coca-Cola Amatil.
“We are still under the radar of Coca-Cola, but from my perspective Coca-Cola is coming to the end of its life-cycle,” said Knorr.
“”It was a great product in the last 30 years but they didn’t realise that consumers are looking for new alternatives… There’s no innovation in that company any more.”