According to the Global Wellness Institute, the global wellness industry reached a valuation of $4.5 trillion in 2022, with projections to reach $7 trillion by 2027. The global mental wellness market, meanwhile, will generate $20.09 billion in revenue in 2023, with an average growth rate expected to exceed 25%. Against this backdrop of a flourishing "new healing economy", young consumers are increasingly focused on self-reflection and self-care as key pursuits. For instance, the beverage brand Dydo leverages this trend by periodically partnering with functional health brands to co-develop targeted functional beverages designed for specific demographics. These products address needs such as fat reduction, sleep enhancement, and energy boosting. This discussion will delve into market data and global case studies to examine how beverage brands can transition from emphasizing health benefits to cultivating emotional connections, ultimately crafting products that provide young consumers with both mental satisfaction and a sense of well-being.

Kaijing Yan, Chairman of Tasly Holding Group, and Wei Wang, Founder of XINGYUN Group, joined forces with Professor Wei Jia and Dr. Ya Cai to explore the future of the ready-to-drink (RTD) tea industry.

Against the broader policy backdrop of the National Health Commission’s launch of the “Year of Weight Management” and the “Three Reductions, Three Health Improvements” initiative, a surge in health-conscious consumer demand is converging with the global rise of tea culture. In this context, two industry titans have integrated their strengths—bridging pharmaceutical innovation with a globalized supply chain—to introduce a pioneering product that marks a new chapter in RTD tea.

Does this collaboration signal China’s entry into the RTD Tea 3.0 era? Is the industry on the cusp of a transformation, with functional tea evolving from category innovation to a model of precise health management?

China's RTD tea market is poised to embark on a new chapter of health-driven evolution and multidimensional value enhancement.

Health beverages have evolved from a "niche label" into a core breakout category. Content-driven e-commerce platforms like TikTok have become critical arenas for beverage brands to incubate new products, capture trends, and activate target consumers. How can new products launch with impact? How can channels break through for growth? These have become two key challenges faced by an increasing number of brands.

Amid the content-commerce boom, LIGHTUP shifted its product launch strategy from channel-driven to content-driven. From its founding in 2022 to 2025, it rose to the top of TikTok’s beverage category by leveraging a “clean-label, zero-additive” health concept and youth-focused marketing as dual growth drivers. Through a closed-loop approach of “self-broadcasting + influencer seeding,” the brand not only achieved over RMB 1.6 billion in online sales but also funneled traffic precisely to offline distributors, enabling full-channel penetration.

This topic will dive deep into how LIGHTUP built a beverage growth flywheel suited to the new consumption era through a consumer co-creation product development model, a dual-channel blockbuster strategy, and a real-time feedback system.

In China, from bottled water to RTD tea and new-style tea beverages, the market’s passion for coconut water continues to rise. Yet in this wave of coconut water popularity, the products are becoming increasingly similar in packaging, repetitive in slogans, and ambiguous in ingredient authenticity. In this fast-paced race where “everything looks the same,” Delgarden offers a solution: setting standards at the source and controlling freshness by time, building a differentiated barrier through a systematic value chain.

Delgarden, a brand under JIANONG Group, has established a 100,000-mu exclusive fragrant coconut plantation in Damnoen Saduak, Thailand; it locks in peak ripeness through a “23-day rotational harvest system”; and ensures the time from harvesting to bottling is under 8 hours — preserving the fresh flavor and natural electrolytes to the greatest extent. This session will take Delgarden as a case study to explore how the brand is breaking into the global market by “setting standards before scaling,” becoming a representative of Chinese coconut water brands going global.

Plant-based beverages are no longer a niche category—they have become a critical entry point linking health trends, consumer segmentation, and formulation innovation. Driven by the rising tides of sugar reduction, functional benefits, and personalization, the functional and cultural value of botanical ingredients is being reactivated.

The FBIF China Botanical Map, developed from the perspective of “medicine and food from the same source,” systematically catalogs edible plant resources across 34 provinces and regions in China, including wild vegetables, traditional Chinese herbs, and region-specific botanicals. This initiative aims to provide structured inspiration for formulation development, flavor exploration, and health-oriented innovation within the food and beverage industry.

According to Frost & Sullivan, China’s sugar-free tea market witnessed explosive growth in 2023, with the total market size doubling year-over-year and an impressive growth rate of 110%—far surpassing the beverage industry’s overall 6% growth and the ready-to-drink tea segment’s 19%. Entering 2024, the momentum has not slowed: from April to May alone, sugar-free RTD tea sales rose by 14.26% year-over-year, with market share up by 26.17%, outpacing all other beverage categories by more than 10 percentage points in sales growth.

This signals a significant shift—sugar-free tea is no longer just a “healthy alternative,” but has officially entered the mainstream. It also marks the onset of a fierce industry race centered around the return to authentic tea flavors, flavor reconstruction, and capturing consumer mindshare.

This discussion aims to trace sugar-free tea back to its origins—from ingredient analysis to flavor extraction—to reimagine how future-facing sugar-free teas can deliver both a stronger sense of natural authenticity and functional benefits, and explore their innovative applications and development within the evolving beverage landscape.

According to the Zhouli Tianguan, ancient China had designated "Beverage Masters" responsible for crafting beverages like the six winter brews and six summer infusions. In the Ming dynasty, classic texts like Agricultural Administration defined "thirst-quenching water" as "beverages", while during the Sui and Tang dynasties, these drinks were called "yinzi". Over 100 traditional medicinal tea recipes for summer heat relief are recorded in ancient Chinese texts—for example, Yinshan Zhengyao describes a "Litchi Syrup Water" that could relieve thirst, and Widely Manual of Aromatic Plants mentions a method for creating thirst-quenching water by pressing lemon juice and boiling it with sugar. The Supplement to the Compendium of Materia Medica mentions that Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty instructed the Hanlin Academy to hold a beverage competition, which crowned "Perilla Infusion" as the top drink. Additionally, Tales of WuLin records that people in the Song Dynasty liked to drink "snow-soaked bean water" to cool down the summer.

The FBIF2025 Classics Revival Competition will invite leading ingredient companies to delve into ancient texts and draw inspiration from traditional "ancient drink" recipes. The challenge is to creatively craft a modern "ancient drink" with an innovative twist, offering brands a comprehensive ingredient solution for "plant-based drink" product development. Audience members will be able to taste these creations on-site and evaluate them across sensory dimensions, including flavor, color, and aroma, ultimately voting for their favorite "ancient drink". Join FBIF2025 Drink Talks to witness the revival of ancient flavors with a modern twist!

In the international market, birch sap and maple sap have long been established as beverages, including brands like Ulan (Belarus), Dovgan (Germany), Sap! (Canada), and Treo (USA). In 2017, we explored the commercial potential of birch sap at FBIF. Today, the birch sap market in China is experiencing rapid growth, with annual sales surpassing 100 million RMB in the past year and achieving a nearly 600% year-on-year increase. Amidst this rapid growth momentum, how can birch sap transcend its niche status, strategically expand market share, and capture sustainable growth opportunities? Nordic Koivu Ltd, the earliest brand in Finland to commercialize birch water, will share the growth logic of birch sap and provide specific strategic directions for the brand.

In the first quarter of 2024, juice sales in China increased by 20.8%, with spending by young consumers born in the 1990s on pure fruit and vegetable juices and functional beverages rising by 16%, significantly outpacing the overall market growth. Leveraging its 26 years of experience in the fruit beverage industry, Leyuan Health remains highly optimistic about the fruit and vegetable juice sector. Beyond its highly sought-after "DL" 50% and 100% juice series—so popular that a purchase limit policy was implemented in collaboration with Pang Dong Lai—Leyuan Health operates three major brands: Leyuan Beverages, Zero Degree Fruit Workshop, and Fruit & Veggie Secrets, covering categories such as blended fruit juice drinks, NFC juices, and fruit & vegetable juices. As the market shifts toward functionalization, how can the combination of fruit and vegetables drive growth through functional ingredient synergies? Perhaps Leo Zheng, Vice President and General Manager of the Marketing Center at Leyuan Health, can offer some insights.

As health awareness grows, low-alcohol beverages are emerging as a new favorite in global consumption trends. In 2023, Kirin’s total revenue reached JPY 2.1344 trillion (approximately RMB 101.5 billion), with its alcoholic beverage segment contributing JPY 1.0451 trillion—over half of the company’s total revenue. Kirin has remained at the forefront of innovation in the global alcohol market. Since the launch of Kirin Ichiban Shibori, the brand has maintained a strong market presence with its refined taste and premium quality. Hyoketsu, featuring a unique frozen fruit juice process and iconic diamond-shaped can, has also garnered widespread consumer appeal. In 2023, after a 17-year hiatus, Kirin introduced a new beer brand—Hare-Kaze—which quickly captured attention with its distinctive "fifth-type" beer profile and smooth drinkability.

In this session, we are honored to welcome Mr. Sohei Takamiya, Director CEO of Kirin China, to share how Kirin leverages innovation and brand differentiation to strategically build and expand its footprint in the low-alcohol market.

In 2018, SATURNBIRD introduced its signature "small can," pioneering the fusion of specialty and instant coffee through its proprietary "REPUS®". This innovation established a new category that redefined convenience without compromising quality. Over the years, SATURNBIRD has continuously expanded its flavor horizons—from tea and natural wines to regionally inspired specialty coffees, snacks, chocolates, and ice creams—consistently pushing the boundaries of traditional categories.

This discussion will delve into SATURNBIRD's insights into its brand and the broader industry, using its journey as a lens to explore current opportunities and possibilities within the food and beverage sector from the perspective of industrial innovation.

From a definitional standpoint, functional beverages refer to drinks that help regulate bodily functions by adjusting nutritional components and their content ratios. They include multiple subcategories such as energy drinks, vitamin drinks, mineral drinks, sports drinks, probiotic drinks, and immune-enhancing beverages. According to data from Precedence Research, from 2022 to 2030, the global functional beverage market size is expected to reach $129.3 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.94%. The functional beverage market is transitioning from the dominance of energy and sports drinks to a focus on diverse needs such as gut health, beauty maintenance, weight management, sleep improvement, and fat reduction.

Facing fierce competition and diversified consumer demands, brands need not only to meet consumers' diverse expectations in taste and product categories but also to achieve breakthroughs in healthy ingredients and functional benefits. For example, VINA's functional soda centers on brain and gut health, helping to balance multiple neurotransmitters in the body. Mighty Pop, on the other hand, has launched a prebiotic soda in the United States, with each bottle containing 1 billion live bacteria. In the future, how to provide consumers with an ideal functional experience under diversified demands will become an important topic for brands.

What if artificial intelligence didn’t just create a drink - but actually tasted it and chose the winning flavor?

Not virtually. Not theoretically. In real life.

Why? To enhance its predictive power and select the formula most likely to win over consumers.

This is no concept or futuristic prototype - HELL AI is a fully developed product, already available across Europe. Created by HELL Energy, a leading energy drink brand present in over 60 countries, this breakthrough pushes the boundaries of what’s possible when AI meets real-world manufacturing.

With one of the world’s largest and most advanced smart factories (6 billion cans produced annually), the company used AI not only to analyze global taste trends and functional ingredients - but also to take the final, most critical step: After generating multiple formulas, the AI selected its favorite by physically tasting the real drinks, created in a laboratory based on its own recipes — and judging the taste to determine which flavor would win with consumers.

Yes - the AI tasted the actual beverages it created.

So how did it work? How can AI taste a drink? How was that even possible?

Join us at FBIF Shanghai to discover how the impossible became reality — and how this breakthrough is transforming the future of food and beverage innovation.