18/03/2020 – News / Beverages / PURA / Soda / Aurora / Awards / Taste Challenge / CSD / South Africa
PURA Soda wins Aurora International Taste challenge
PURA Beverages – the creator of a range of innovative clean-label, low-sugar sodas – has won a prestigious award at the Aurora International Taste Challenge.
The South Africa headquartered soft drinks brand was bestowed with an accolade for its ‘Cucumber & Lime’ flavoured soda in the ‘Best Tasting Non-Alcoholic Beverage’ category.
The best of the best
Aurora International Taste Challenge 2019 featured some of the top sommeliers and food professionals, who were tasked with judging drinks from around the world.
With over 2,000 glasses on hand, it was no small task to find the ‘best of the best’, with each product assessed on many qualities – including appearance, smell, taste, mouth-feel and aftertaste.
The Taste Challenge’s soft drinks category showed great variety, agreed the judges, with ‘adult’ soft drinks making headway. PURA’s win proved a prime example of the shift in consumer preference to soft drinks featuring not only lower sugars, but also natural flavours – and no compromise on taste.
Award-winning natural flavours
PURA’s range of sparkling beverages contains less than one-third the sugar of most soft drinks available in the market today, accompanied by 100-per-cent natural flavourings and zero artificial colourants. Retailing at roughly the same price as Pepsi or Coca-Cola, PURA Soda provides a healthier – yet still great-tasting – alternative to its sugar-laden counterparts, and is available in a variety of carefully researched flavours.
Aside from the aforementioned award-winning ‘Cucumber & Lime’ flavour, the beverage brand is also available in ‘Pomegranate’, ‘Seville Orange’, ‘Lemon & Elderflower’ and ‘Cranberry’ varieties.
Nor is PURA’s win at the Aurora International Taste Challenge its first accolade: the soda brand has been named the “hottest beverage for summer” two years in a row by all the major publications in South Africa.
Advancing the PURA taste
In December last year, the brand formed an agreement with global fast-food chain Burger King, which saw three flavours of PURA Soda rolled out at all Burger King restaurants throughout South Africa. The tie-up encompasses a global supplier listing that will mean that PURA Soda will eventually be launched in Burger King restaurants across other jurisdictions thereafter.
Beyond that, the firm also recently introduced a new 200ml can as the result of a number of collaborations with various liquor partners, in a bid to provide a healthier, great tasting mixer option.
Now with a presence on three continents, PURA Beverage Co’s major focus going forward is on expansion into the colossal US market, which represents an enormous opportunity for the business.
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