Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Mmm... carbonated milk!

When you say "New Zealand" and "innovation," you generally think of crazy adrenaline activities, like bungee and jetboating (both were pretty much developed there). But Kiwi ingenuity also extends to junk food - and drink.

Richard Revell, a North Island dairy farmer, has invented a carbonated drink that uses milk rather than water. The result, as the Waikato Times puts it, are drinks that have "cola and lemonade tastes but with a pleasant extra dairy kick." Revell spent six years developing the concoction, called mo2, and expects to begin selling it in the next few weeks.

But there's always some controversy. Revell would like to show off and sell his wares at New Zealand's annual Fieldays, or "Australasia's definitive agri-business exhibition," but the organizers won't let him because they have a contract with Coca-Cola that ensures the soft drink company is the supplier of all non-alcoholic drinks at the event.

Fieldays organizers apparently asked Coca-Cola to make an exception but the company refused, saying that doing so "would be unfair to any of those prior applicants who have approached us with a similar proposal."

Interestingly, Coca-Cola did test its own carbonated milk drink, called Vio, last year in the U.S. Could its refusal of Revell's product be a coincidence? Oh yeah, for sure.

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