SPA revisits its lemonade recipe and cuts sugar content by 45%

From April this year, the sugar content of SPA still and sparkling lemonades will be cut by about 45% over the whole range. To achieve this result, Spadel will be reviewing the recipe for its SPA lemonades. They will still contain 100% naturally occurring ingredients, but will now contain more juice to give them even more flavour. The packaging of SPA lemonades will also be completely reviewed with the circular economy in mind, and also to create more consistency between sparkling and non-sparkling lemonades, which will be grouped under the same SPA Fruit brand.

Recent years have seen growing momentum for healthy and natural soft drinks. Natural mineral waters, flavoured waters, sugar-free drinks and low-sugar fizzy drinks are growing strongly, while sales of sweetened drinks are declining. The Covid crisis has only accelerated this trend, since a recent survey of 1,000 Belgian consumers conducted by the Royal Federation of the Water and Soft Drinks Industry (FIEB) revealed that nearly 40% of respondents say they have been eating and drinking more healthily since the pandemic began. Clearly, consumers are increasingly choosing to consume less sugar.

To encourage consumers to continue this movement towards healthier and more responsible soft drinks, the Spadel Group has decided to completely revisit the recipe and range of its SPA lemonades, which will upgrade them from Nutriscore D to Nutriscore C. The new lemonades, which will now all be marketed under the SPA Fruit brand, will contain less sugar (about 45% less over the entire range compared with the current recipe) and fewer calories (between 8 and 12 kcal per 100 ml, compared with a maximum of 19 kcal per 100 ml today). They will also contain more juice, which will give these lemonades an even fruitier and more authentic taste. At the same time, SPA lemonades will of course always contain natural mineral water, as well as 100% ingredients of natural origin.

“We are pleased to see that more and more consumers are opting for local, healthy and natural drinks, with no preservatives or artificial ingredients,” says Bart Peeters, Benelux Country Director at Spadel. “We were already meeting most of these new needs with our natural mineral waters and flavoured waters, but now we are taking a step further by also offering lemonades with much less sweetening and 100% natural ingredients. This approach clearly distinguishes us from our main competitors.”

The new SPA lemonades will gradually appear on the Belgian and Dutch markets in April 2022. To accompany this launch, the packaging will be completely revised, while several new flavours will appear, in both sparkling and non-sparkling lemonades.