BevCanna is expected to launch its bottled water brand TRACE in the U.S. in Q3 2021.
Canadian public company BevCanna that offers cannabis-based wellness products plans to expand its infused functional beverages rapidly just south of the border in 2021 after recently acquiring beverage manufacturer Naturo Group.
The $40 million deal, which was completed in December 2020, included a proprietary fulvic and humic plant-based mineral formulation authorized by Health Canada to create a naturally black-colored water under Naturo’s signature brand TRACE, as well as its 40,000-square-foot facility.
This will allow BevCanna to compete more effectively in the traditional functional beverage category, and make it the first international company to sell black water in the U.S. alongside domestic band, blk Beverages.
First Big Foray Into The U.S.
Naturo’s founder and CEO of BevCanna Marcello Leone, who believes the merger can create “significant value” to both organizations, notes how minerals and other plant-based nutrients in their black water are able to prevent cognitive degeneration, and how they together act a strong immune builder.
The two entities have a combined $55 million assets, including an alkaline spring water source, and a state-of-the-art beverage plant fully licensed for cannabis and traditional beverage manufacturing.
“This is going to be our first big foray into the U.S. market,” Leone recently told me, though BevCanna has already started selling its CBD products in the region through recently acquired e-commerce platform Pure Therapy, and a manufacturing partnership with Colorado-based cannabis beverages producer Keef Brands.
TRACE's alkaline water is naturally colored with plant-derived fulvic and humic minerals.
The TRACE team will primarily focus on distributing across natural retailers, with future plans to sell in the mainstream channel as well, according to BevCanna’s president, Melise Panetta, who has previously served as executives at companies including PepsiCo and SC Johnson.
Panetta said: “Our focus right now is launching our white-label [CBD] products signed with Keef Brands, which is currently the number-one infused beverage company in the U.S., but innovation [of bringing TRACE to the cannabis space] could be a potential for us in the future.”
To support TRACE’s launch in the U.S., BevCanna is strengthening its manufacturing capabilities in the country to reduce international shipping, and is actively fostering relations with local brokers, according to Panetta.
“Plant-based products account for about 13% of total functional water market right now, but we’re going to see over the next four or five years that they will become a pretty sizable portion of the overall category,” she added. “Products like TRACE just beautifully glide right into that space.”
Rising Demand For Sustainable Products
BevCanna’s U.S. manufacturing buildup also resonates with the rising consumer demand for more sustainable products, especially as long-distance shipping of plastic bottles can increase carbon footprint.
Lauren Abda, the co-founder of Branch Venture Group, stresses how the global consumption of bottled water is actually increasing due to demand for safe drinking water, but said: “in an effort to improve sustainability, we’ve seen startups innovating primarily in two ways, on packing and sourcing, to reduce the environmental impact of this growing category.”
CJ Pennington, the cofounder and president of Idaho-based Proud Source Water that uses 100% aluminum and infinitely recyclable cans, recently said during the FoodEdge Summit hosted by the Boston-based venture group that packaging is the most convenient way to communicate sustainability with the consumer.
“We were the only aluminum-bottled water in the aisle when we launched,” Pennington said, “addressing the elephant in the room that plastic is becoming a pandemic, because unfortunately, only 8% of the plastic globally ends up being collected or recycled.”
He noted how it’s “a matter of when, not if” all CPG entrepreneurs should eventually include sustainable components in their products.
