After strong Q4 in 2013 and modest gain in Jan this yr, imports took a 207K-bbl, 9.1% hit in Feb, reports Lester Jones from Beer Inst based on Commerce Dept data. Even Mexican shipments, which had been rockin’ since late 2013, off 7% in Feb.  And shipments from most other key source countries continued down: Netherlands (-28%), Canada (-19%), Germany (-34%).  Belgian shipments nearly doubled tho.  Feb loss knocked back yr-to-date import trend to -158,000 bbls, -3.8%.  With Feb import loss, total US shipments up 342,000 bbls, 1.1% Jan-Feb.

Perrier is launching extension exclusively for 7-Eleven dubbed Perrier Sparkling Water L'Orange, CSNews reported after ambling show floor of internal expo for c-store chain's franchisees in Chicago metro . . . Big Red's Hydrive energy water has added pair of seasonal summer flavors: Honey Lemonade and Mango Peach . . . Bai Brands has added a half-and-half-style entry called Tanzania Lemonade Tea to its range of low-calorie, antioxidant-rich bevs.  

Donna Bimbo, who helped boost Snapple's international presence during brand's headier growth days, has signed on as ceo of Life Up LLC, which imports and distributes Foco brand of coconut water and other tropical bevs. Former Lipton exec Bob D'Amico, who's spent 20 years with Foco importer Vasinee, has simultaneously assumed role of cmo. Life Up currently claims to sell 24 mil cans of Foco per year, and has been taking steps over past coupla years to move it from an ethnic staple to offering broader appeal, including via 2-year-old all-natural line packed in aseptic boxes. Life Up is unit of Thai Agri Food Co . . . Longtime Ito En (North America) exec Jim Hoagland has gotten another bump in authority, with promotion to coo from evp sales & marketing. In wake of Hoagland promo, recent hire Brad Angevine, who signed on from Apple & Eve in Nov, has been elevated to svp marketing and product, while LA-based Kyoichiro Asai moves up to svp Asian & DSD division. Hoagland joined co in its early days in 03 after career at Carmichael Training Systems, OmegaTech, Shady Brook Farms, Perdue Farms and Thomas J Lipton, and has been instrumental in establishing unsweetened Teas' Tea line as superpremium entry cultivating broad consumer base, and extending reach to include sweetened siblings and other lines such as Oi Ocha traditional teas and Sencha Shots. Most recently, he played key role in launch of Jay Street RTD coffee, devised for US market in co's Brooklyn offices. Jim will continue to commute to Bklyn hq from his base in Boulder, Colo . . . Essentia Water has brought on Neuro vet Greg Buscher as cfo, succeeding retiring Keith Huetson, who's been along for ride since 98. Key first task for Buscher will be to assess whether Bothell, Wash, co's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is up to snuff as brand continues on rapid expansion under exec team that founder/ceo Ken Uptain has been assembling in recent months. Buscher's 25-year career includes tenure at Metagenics, Alliance Automotive Group, Home Organizers and, most recently, Neuro marketer Neurobrands LLC . . . KonaRed said it's named Mike Halsey as vp/coo, reporting to founder/ceo Shaun Roberts. Over past 2 decades Halsey has held exec posts at BestBuy and Target retailers, most recently serving as global retail supply chain/omni channel dir for Best Buy's Western Region, which includes Hawaii, where KonaRed is based.  

Dallas entrepreneur who's picked up key staff and concepts of predecessor brand to BLK Water is ready to launch his challenge to black-hued, fulvic-acid-bearing brand under Fulhum name - along the way picking up local bottling plant and hanging out his shingle as a copacker, too. Also in mix is alcoholic brand family called Buccaneer that employs fulvic acid in gin, vodka, rum and other spirits segments. All this from entrepreneur, CJ Comu, whose long track record hasn't earlier included consumer products.

Operating as EarthWater, Comu's Regus Group is launching Fulhum (named for its fulvic and humic acid contents) at upcoming Fancy Food Show in NY in late Jun. Premise is that fulvic acid and broader family of humic acids, created from ancient aquatic plants, offer complement to foods we ingest that are lacking dozens of essential nutrients due to depletion of farm acreage, a problem barely assuaged by organic diet. Item is claimed to offer 70 of these nutrients, from lithium to osmium, in water of pH above 9. Item is dubbed "mineral infused health water." Core ingredient is dredged from secret dry lake bed in NM, where fulvic acid was created 80 mil years ago at time Rocky Mtns were created. It's shipped to Amarillo, Tex, for rendering into concentrate, then bottled at Dallas copacker that Comu's group just bought that's now called Southwest Bottling & Co-Pack.

Fulhum is packed in striking 20-oz globe-topped bottle with SRP of $1.99. To help develop route to market, co has enlisted locally based GBS Growth Partners' Smash incubation group. Fulhum also will sell 4-oz packs of concentrate at $40 and "sachets" that allow consumers to add fulvic acid to their regular bev choices, such as sodas and coffee. Comu is in discussions with mall operator that's expressed interest in operating franchised Fulhum kiosks and major c-store chain may do 3-market test. Media support, planned via radio, print and social media, will assure consumers that Fulhum offers "70 life-affirming minerals in one bottle," per spec radio creative that Comu shared with BBI. He acknowledged that EarthWater might be more compelling name, but said rights issues encouraged him to proceed with newly created Fulhum brand instead, tho product will be described as "a product of EarthWater PLC."

With roots in Vancouver, BC, Comu said his interest was sparked by meeting Vancouver-based entrepreneurs whose Blackwater Innovations had come up with idea of doing black-hued fulvic acid vehicle under Blackwater brand that later was picked up by BLK Water team in NJ (which was subsequently sued by Blackwater Innovations for stealing concept). Comu sought to get involved with Blackwater and, when that proved unfruitful, recruited Ivan Solomon, Gordie Jung and Don Patterson from its exec team with offer of equity stake to go it on his own. (Former Coke/Minute Maid exec Don Short is among advisors.) Original entry, Blackwater, remains in limited circulation in Western Canada, even as BLK Water has created visible presence over past few years via ties to Housewives of NJ TV franchise. Comu serves as chmn of merchant banking and consulting firm Regus Advisors, the key Series A investor, tho co currently is undertaking B round aiming at $2.5 mil in new capital. Among Comu's earlier activities, from 2005-09 he was founder/ceo of Sun Sports & Entertainment, publicly traded producer of mixed martial arts and boxing events. Co info at EarthWater.com.

Aiming to Turn Around Jus-Made Copacker as Southwest Bottling As for acquisition of 60-year-old copacker formerly operating as Jus-Made, Comu said his search for production partner led him to Jus-Made just as it was about to close doors, so he orchestrated acquisition that closed on Jan 10. In co's early days founder Lamar Dial had invented 7-Eleven Slurpee and Orange Julius. Renamed Southwest Bottling & Co-Pack, copacker occupies 180K square feet and operates 8 production lines, including both alcoholic and NA products, with both hotfill and coldfill capability. It can handle range of sizes from 4-oz bottles to industrial-size totes. Tho it currently doesn't do cans or carbonated items, that may change as co pursues overtures from overseas energy player seeking US production site, CJ said. Copacker had been owned by affiliate of distressed-assets investor SigmaBleyzer Investment Group. Regus has turned its operational expertise to upgrading production assets like chillers and generally overseeing turnaround of copacker, whose clients include likes of BYB Brands' Tum-E Yummies kids line. It's ready to relaunch production now, test-producing 5K bottles of Fulhum during shakedown stage.  

Those "You're on" ads, meant to be hip enough to steer energy drink consumers to Diet Coke, have already gone dark just months after being intro'd, reported NY Times. Coca-Cola decided pulling plug was best to put an end to rumblings that ads were backhanded way of evoking cocaine use, which co had denied since controversy first surfaced (BBI, Mar 3). "Abrupt end" for ads was seen by Times adman Stuart Elliott as reaction to blog posts from AdFreak, Huff Post and others which wondered, "Is Diet Coke Dabbling in Drug References in its Ads?" (Another headlined: "Diet Coke Trying to Act Like This Isn't a Cocaine Joke.") As we reported 2 months ago, the ads had succeeded in generating buzz, but not very positive buzz. New ads will be "more traditional" and focus on Diet Coke taste and "sugar-free status," noted paper. Online reactions "were far from a firestorm," and Businessweek assessed campaign as "minor flub," but "still once ads have been denigrated, derided or lampooned on blogs, Facebook or Twitter, they are often perceived as damaged goods," noted Times' Elliott.

KO also listened to outsiders this week when it joined PepsiCo in dropping use of brominated vegetable oil (BVO) in its drinks. "Chalk up another win for citizen activists," said NPR about ingredient switch. Recall BVO uproar started from one 15-yr-old girl's petition that got over 200K signatures to urge cos to stop mixing drinks with BVO, since it was banned in other countries. KO credited for taking action even though, to date, "the worst thing you can say" about BVO "is that its safety has not been studied very well, noted NPR. Still, ingredient has been banned from markets like Japan and European Union.  

Reporting another qtr of sagging revenue, private-label producer Cott said it's accelerating its shift to growing bev segments - possibly even including branded products and fresh juice - and dialing up efforts to acquire cos operating outside declining CSDs and shelf-stable juices. On investor call this morning, ceo Jerry Fowden continued to inveigh vs what he views as branded CSD players' futile efforts to discount their way out of CSD malaise, arguing that anyone who walks into grocery store can see that their talk of rational pricing environment is nonsense. It's those promo efforts, of course, that have made life so difficult for Cott by narrowing price differential nearly to vanishing point. "We can all listen to all the commentary we want, but if you just pop out to a few stores yourself, you'll find national brands at 3 bucks on 12-packs and a load of 2-liter soda at $1, and when we're $2.68 and 84 cents, that's not much of a price gap and that's what we are seeing," he said.

For Q1, revenues sagged 6% to $475 mil (-7% excluding foreign exchange impact) and gross margin shrank to 10.6% from 11.2%. Volume was off 8% in 8-oz-equivalent cases, with slipping CSDs and ongoing exit from casepack water offset partly by hotfill and juice growth, contract packing wins and gains at Brit co acquired last year called Calypso (no relation to Calypso lemonade in US). Calypso's gains helped UK biz to 9% overall volume gain, vs 10% decline in N Amer. Operating income plunged 73% to $4.1 mil. Net loss of $2.5 mil reversed $400K earnings of a year earlier. Fowden said he expects to see the CSD declines continue, perhaps with some improvement in N Am toward end of year. Despite rhetoric of Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and DPS about rational pricing environment, Fowden seems to harbor little illusion that frenetic discounting of last summer won't return, offering pointed comments on where he thinks that biz needs to go (see below). Meanwhile, shares skidded down as much as 9% in trading today.

Recall that a few months back ceo had disclosed that co was undertaking strategic review - then later had to dispel assumption among some observers that this meant COT had thrown in towel and was up for sale. Today Fowden stressed that co had considered wide range of alternatives, including a sale, but settled on 5-point strategy that calls for it to maintain efficiency-garnering program dubbed "4 Cs" while increasing resources focused on contract mfg, boosting borrowing capacity, increasing return of funds to shareholders to up to 50% of free cash flow in coming year and, most importantly, accelerating acquisition-based diversification. Indeed, co is "in active dialogue with 15-20 companies" in range of segments that would enable COT to lessen its reliance on CSDs and shelf-stable juices sold in grocers and large-format stores. Asked by analyst whether he'd consider things like branded items and fresh juices, Fowden replied: "I wouldn't preclude either of those," and some acquisition targets do operate in chilled or frozen channels. Hard to say if or when any of these talks will result in deal, Fowden cautioned.

Fowden said he took heart from growth in UK of Calypso, whose portfolio includes several branded offerings such as Mr Freeze ice pops and Jubbly kid-targeted bevs. Tho Fowden made no reference to Cott's disastrous foray into branded items under earlier ceo Brent Willis, he stressed that any such items would be high-volume, value-oriented brands that get to retail via broadliners, not DSD. (Willis' strategy had foundered in part when private-label customer Walmart demanded direct shipment of branded items that had been assigned to DSD shops, thereby alienating laboriously recruited wholesaler network.) Meanwhile, contract mfg biz nearly tripled from below 3 mil cases to over 7.5 mil cases, well on way to hitting anticipated 10-mil-case target for 2014.

Rational Pricing? Just Walk into Any Store, CEO Says In recent qtrs analysts have continued to inquire about disconnect they see between pronouncements from Big 3 soda cos that pricing is rational and evidence at store level of frequent and deep promos, with Coca-Cola generally viewed as aggressor in much of this. That's important question, because key point of reassurance from soda cos to Wall St as CSD volumes have declined has been that they can still make money from rising prices. Yet here's CSD exec whose eyes are riveted to CSD pricing insisting that there's nothing rational about this pricing. In other words, question has lots greater weight than deleterious impact on Cott itself.

For starters, Fowden said scanner data itself shows CSDs down 1.5% in volume but 3% down in value, clear evidence of "value destruction." That conviction is borne out every time he hits a store. During visits one recent week to 3 large Fla chains near Cott's Fla offices, one was offering branded 12-packs of cans for $3, another was offering four 12-packs for $11 and the third had a buy-one, get-one deal going on 12-packs, reducing the price gap vs Cott's private-label alternatives to as little as 8 cents. Weekly price checks of all major US retailers clearly show 2-liter bottles at $1 or 12-pack cans at $3 or below "for every week through the quarter from something like Jan 16." To Fowden, that's not sustainable nor does it restore long-term growth to category. Only solution is rationalization of CSD capacity and shift of efforts to other segments, he believes. But he doesn't expect that to happen before another "challenging 2 or 3 years." Asked whether deep discounts might be at retailers' initiative rather than Coke or Pepsi themselves, Fowden acknowledged that can be hard to gauge but pointed to recent Nielsen data that shows one of them with "reasonably narrow" gap between volume movements and value movements but other (presumably Coke) with gap that's "very wide indeed" - so "it's very hard to imagine that it's all being funded by the retailers," is his conclusion.  

Hawaii-based KonaRed Corp said Vitamin Shoppe nutrition chain will be carrying its complex of Hawaiian Coffeeberry bevs and supplements in "select" locations in 37 states. Vitamin Shoppe picks up not just bevs but On-the-Go Packets and 100% Hawaiian Coffeeberry in 150-gram tubs. Publicly traded co already has cracked likes of Whole Foods, Walmart, Safeway, Sprouts and 7-Eleven . . . Cheribundi said 32-oz bottles of its Tart Cherry Juice and Tart Cherry Juice Light have been accepted by Foodtown chain, which will merchandise brand in produce sections' cold boxes.  

We've previously reported on Pepsi's Tazo glass-bottle tea showing up at 50 cents per unit at Publix grocery chain in Fla (BBI, Jun 19 2012). Now a key rival, Coke's Honest Tea, seems to be goin' deep in NY metro, turning up at 88 cents per 16-oz glass-bottle to cardholders at Stop & Shop chain. We've spotted it at Flatbush Ave store in Bklyn but it seems to be broadly offered deal in chain's stores in NY metro, along with 32-oz bottles of Powerade at 69 cents and 12-oz bottles of Odwalla at 2 for $4, per perusal of chain's online fliers. BBI has seen our share of 10-for-$10 Honest Tea promos, but nothing this deep in past that we can recall, tho it's nowhere close to Tazo's deep dive 2 years back. Bear in mind, tho, while Tazo is all-natural, Honest Tea goes big step further on cost side as certified organic item . . . Noted recently at NY's ubiquitous Duane Reade drug chain: Body Armor promo'd at buy-1, get-1 (at $2) to cardholders. Staffers at marketer said it was way to stimulate sampling of reformulated line that's gettin' intensive push in city as prime target market.  

New study led by Harvard School of Public Health researchers has concluded that increase in coffee consumption may lessen risk of type 2 diabetes. Study published last week in Diabetologia, jnl of European Assn for Study of Diabetes, found that folks who increased consumption by more than 1 cup per day over 4-year period had 11% lower risk for disease than those who made no changes to coffee consumption. They also found that those who cut back their coffee consumption in that amount increased their diabetes risk by 17%. Tho that insight has been reported in other studies, these findings "provide new evidence that changes in coffee consumption habit can affect type 2 diabetes risk in a relatively short period of time," said lead author Shilpa Bhupathiraju. Harvard study was based on analysis of consumption data about 47,510 women in Nurses' Health Study II (1991-2007), 27,759 men in Health Professionals Follow-up Study (1986-2006) and 48,464 women in Brigham & Women's Hospital-based Nurses' Health Study (1986-2006). Similar results did not occur with increases in consumption of decaf coffee or tea.  

Marley Coffee marketer Jammin Java Corp has reached deal with Canada's Mother Parkers coffee roastery that will bring infusion of up to $8.25 mil in new funding for sustainably grown coffee line. Deal calls for Mother Parkers to acquire 7.3 mil units consisting of common share and warrant to purchase a common share, at $0.3409 per unit, for $2.5 mil. Exercise of those warrants can yield additional $3.75 mil. And Mother Parkers will provide Marley Coffee with $2 mil of marketing and brand promotion funding (some already tapped for Colorado Rockies partnership and slotting fees in Canada). Partners have enjoyed previous tie stemming from Mother Parker's role as brand's Canadian foodservice distributor and inclusion of Marley Coffee in its RealCup K-Cup-compatible single-serve capsules. Note that Jammin has no corporate connection to separate group that's been building line of Marley-branded RTD teas and coffees.