Following much deliberation, C&I has chosen innovative new beverage Shine+ Charged as the best new release product of the year, awarding it as the 2021 C&I Choice winner.
Shine+ Charged is a 500ml ‘better for you’ energy drink that utilises the benefits of nootropics as opposed to the traditional high sugar options.
Steve Chapman, Founder, Shine+, said winning being named the C&I Choice Product of the Year was something that has been on his bucket list since founding the company.
“It’s such a huge honour. I also think it’s probably one of the best awards we can be get, given we are traditionally so dominant in petrol and convenience (P&C). This really is the channel we care about the most.”
Chapman said the inspiration for creating Shine+ Charged through research that showed one of the leading reasons why people purchased a beverage was for a pick-me-up. So, the team decided to build a range optimised for the consumer looking for a healthier energy drink alternative.
“We looked at the market and realised there was no one really owning that space whatsoever from a brand leadership perspective. Aside from your big energy players that would have a sugar free option, but that would generally be artificially sweetened.”
Chapman said that while the range, which currently has four flavours, is sugar-free it doesn’t compromise on flavour, which was very important.
“We didn’t want to sacrifice flavour for zero sugar. Often people think that there’s this trade off, when something is made from zero sugar, but we pushed food scientists hard and really came up with something that’s full-flavour but with very low calories and no sugar.”
Another reason why C&I has awarded Shine+ Charged the best new release product is the company’s impressive growth over the past 12 months, which is at 100 per cent growth on the previous year.
“Our company goal is to keep doubling every year, so 100 per cent is the benchmark. And we are well above that at the moment, which is nice.
“So that’s the plan for the next 12 months as well and we’re probably already on track to double again, for the next four months. Now with the success of this Charged range, it’s doing far better than we expected.”
Initially created for P&C, Shine+ Charge is set to go market wide, but Chapman said due to energy being so traditionally dominant within P&C, he expects that to be the biggest channel.
There are currently four flavours available, Blood Orange, Wild Tropical, Grape, which is exclusive to 7-Eleven, and mixed berry, which is exclusive to Ampol.
Chapman said that of those flavours, Grape has proven the most popular.
“Energy drinks have never launched a grape flavour successfully. Grape is such a dominant flavour in sports, so we’ve kind of bridged that gap where no energy drinks have actually done it before, and it’s now jumped to our number one selling SKU in 7-Eleven, above all the 330ml and glass bottles ranges.”