LONDON, UK — The Coca-Cola Company and Costa Coffee have today unveiled Costa Coffee Ready-to-Drink (RTD), a new chilled, canned coffee brewed with Costa Coffee beans, designed for consumers looking for a genuine coffee hit, from a chilled coffee.
Costa Coffee RTD will launch with three of Costa Coffee’s most popular variants – Classic Latte, Caramel Latte and Black Americano. The new range has proper coffee at its core, with the same Mocha Italia Signature Blend coffee beans used in all Costa Coffee. Costa Coffee RTD contains 30% less sugar than most other ready-to-drink coffees in Great Britain, with between 95 – 120 calories per 250ml can. The result provides consumers with an authentic coffee experience with a real caffeine hit, with each drink containing the equivalent of a double shot of espresso.
The launch comes in the first six months since Coca-Cola completed the acquisition of Costa Coffee.
“Our teams at Coca-Cola and Costa Coffee have been working around-the-clock to make our shared vision of Costa Coffee ready-to-drink coffee a reality,” said Jennifer Mann, Senior Vice President and President of Global Ventures for Coca-Cola. “This demonstrates the power of our partnership. It combines the marketing expertise, global scale and distribution credentials of the Coca-Cola system with Costa Coffee’s expertise and capabilities in coffee. The result is a fantastic tasting, ready-to-drink coffee.”
Dominic Paul, CEO of Costa Coffee said: “Through this collaboration we’ve been able to work together to offer consumers the great taste of Costa Coffee in a can for the first time. We are committed to working together to give consumers more opportunities to enjoy the Costa Coffee they know and love, whenever they want, wherever they are. We’re really proud to have bought this product to market at such speed while still ensuring the range has proper coffee at its heart.”
The range is launching in Great Britain from later this month closely followed by launches in Poland and China. The first countries to launch the product are countries where Costa Coffee already has a strong presence. Further roll-outs will happen later in the year.
As with all Costa Coffee, all the coffee beans are Rainforest Alliance Certified. The range will be sold in 250ml cans which are 100% recyclable.
The launch is the latest move from The Coca-Cola Company as the company continues to expand the range of drinks it makes to offer consumers more choice. In Great Britain it follows on from the launch of Coca-Cola Energy and Signature Mixers and Aquarius earlier this year. The new range is set to further move Costa Coffee to becoming the world’s number one coffee business. Costa Coffee now has over 2,600 coffee shops in the UK and more than 1,300 plus shops in 32 overseas markets. There are also now more than 8,000 Costa Express self-serve machines in the UK.
Costa Coffee RTD will be available nationwide from later this month. It will be supported by a marketing campaign including out of home, digital, PR and sampling.
