Soft drinks includes a range of beverages such as carbonated and diluted fruit juices, ready to drink teas, smoothies, and energy drinks. The UK sector is worth £15.0 bn with volumes exceeding 14.2bn litres or 227 litres/capita. They are made with water, flavouring agents and sugars (raw sugar, granulated sugar, fructose, high fructose corn syrup). The Leatherhead Food Research Market Report confirms “that more people are inclined to seek out healthier and less sugary beverages as well as removing artificial additives and ingredients to achieve a more ‘natural’ positioning.” This project is totally concerned with reducing added sugar to soft drinks and has the potential to transform the sector. The recently commissioned government report “Sugar Reduction – The Evidence for Action” October 2015, confirms “we are eating too much sugar and it is bad for our health. Consuming too many foods and drinks high in sugar can lead to weight gain and related health problems, as well as tooth decay”. Wet Engineering has identified a novel way to significantly reduce the sugar content in soft drinks in the region of about 50%.

Soft drinks includes a range of beverages such as carbonated and diluted fruit juices, ready to drink teas, smoothies, and energy drinks. The UK sector is worth £15.0bn with volumes exceeding 14.2bn litres or 227 litres/capita for 2012. They are formulated with water, flavouring agents and sugars/sweeteners (raw sugar, granulated sugar, fructose and high fructose corn syrup). The mains water used in manufacturing soft drinks is filtered using an industry high-pressure process known as “reverse osmosis” (RO) to remove minerals and other constituents in the water to comply with mandatory Food and Drug Administration standards. This RO water is chemically aggressive, and has a pH of 6.1 (mildly acidic) and a Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) content of 0.3mg/l. Once formulated soft drinks have of pH 2-5 (strong acid). The sugars are added to counteract the salty and bitter tastes produced by the added flavours in the acidic RO water, so their primary function is to enhance taste. We have identified a gap in the market to develop an innovative “alkaline” soft drink technology based on alkaline water with natural flavours, free from added sugars. To achieve this, we need to develop alkaline water with “reserve alkalinity” and low TDS (<0.5mg/l) using alkaline earth elements.