Coffee-mate Natural Bliss

Nestlé is making progress in finding a buyer for its full suite of water brands, per a report in Bloomberg.

Innovative trendsetters? Profitability-minded business plans? Big, big revenues? All of the above? Trying to figure out just what a major beverage strategic is looking for when it goes into M&A mode is not that simple.

A French Senate investigation found this week that Nestlé colluded with French government officials to cover up that it had filtered its Perrier brand of sparkling water in clear violation of French and European Union standards for the term “natural mineral water.”

Fueled by widespread acceptance for both almond and oat milks, plant-based milk continues to scale at a healthy clip, expanding dollar sales 9.1% through January 23, according to data from IRI.

New Age Beverages Corporation, the Colorado-based organic and natural products company, has announced the expansion of their partnership with Nestle, including the broadening of their license agreement on NESTEA to now include all products under the brand, including NESTEA Powdered Tea products in the United States.

All channel sales for snacks and non-alcoholic beverages grew 5.1 percent during the four-week period ending Mar. 23, according to an analysis of Nielsen data by Wells Fargo Securities.

The first-ever U.S. Access to Nutrition Index, produced by the Access to Nutrition Foundation (ATNF), an independent non-profit organization, assigns a numerical score on a scale of one to 10 based on an evaluation of what the top ten food and beverage companies in the U.S. are doing to increase consumers’ access to healthy and affordable products.

Nestlé and Nuritas have entered into a collaboration aiming at discovering bioactive peptide networks within specific target areas of significant value.

Know Brainer, a ketogenic creamer brand, has partnered with Nestlé via the Terra Food + Ag Tech Accelerator program to incubate the brand. The program began in October with an 8-week educational curriculum and will close an additional 8-week pilot period in February.

From acquisitions to new investments and the rise (or fall) of various brands and categories, the impact of the past year will continue to be felt well into 2018. We’ve put together our list of the Top 10 Most Read BevNET stories of 2017.

As 2017 comes to a close, we recap the top five investments and acquisitions in the beverage market over the past year.

Nestlé USA today announced its acquisition of Chameleon Cold-Brew for an undisclosed sum, roping the Austin, Tex.-based brand into its widening coffee portfolio.

As reported in The Financial Times, Nestlé, the world’s largest coffee company, has paid up to $500 million, at a valuation of over $700 million, for a 68 percent stake in Blue Bottle. The company will continue to operate as an independent entity and current management and employees will retain a minority stake in the business.

FODMAP is an acronym for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides And Polyols, which classifies specific types of short-chain carbohydrates that can be poorly absorbed in the small intestine, resulting in severe abdominal pain, bloating, constipation and/or diarrhea and excess gas in some people.