This time, the marketing collaboration will be presented as CREATEA Mighty Mango, formulated with the industry’s most resurged ingredient—creatine. Within the last year, science, social media and a shift in perception have pushed the known-for-muscle-benefits compound to be considered across broader healthy aging subcategories including menopause, cognitive function and bone health.
“Creatine has been a hot ingredient in the sports nutrition market for its muscle performance benefits for years,” said Joey Savage, CEO of Savage Nutra and CREATEA’s formulator. “With this formulation, we wanted to break creatine out of that box for a more mainstream audience and highlight some of the other health benefits it can offer.”
The 12 oz-can, which will present as the official performance beverage of SupplySide Global, also features the Zynamite S mango leaf extract from PLT Health Solutions for non-stim mental energy, SweetVantage natural sweetener from NNB Nutrition and InnovaBean from NutriScience Innovations as natural alternative to synthetic caffeine.
ADM developed the flavor system, Lacore Nutraceuticals managed filling and manufacturing, Nutramedia led branding and package design, McDowell Label provided the flexographic sleeve printing, and PricePlow served as project manager.
Creatine 2.0: Finding new demographics
CREATEA leverages creatine’s new-found public-facing identity as foundational nutrient across health categories and the lifespan, supported by an emerging and growing body of research into the effects of creatine supplementation in different populations, at different doses, in different forms and for different health outcomes. Most recently, it has been linked to lower death risk.
At the NutraIngredients Sports & Active Nutrition Summit (SANS) in February, Scott Dicker, marketing insights director at research firm SPINS, predicted that creatine sales would continue to grow, noting at the time that dollar sales were up 48.9% year on year—from $61.6 million to $91.7 million for the 52 weeks ending Feb. 12.
“The number one thing I always look at for what ingredient is going to really take off is an established ingredient that finds new demographics or new health focuses,” he said during his presentation. “Creatine, check, check, check. It’s expanded to women, it’s expanded to older generations, and they’re studying it for things like brain health, among other things.”
Following his presentation, Steve Jennings, the man who first brought creatine to market at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, laid out his plans for a Creatine 2.0 revolution. His company, Jenerise, has been developing a creatine-based “daily cellular energy formula that supports lifelong vitality from the inside out” with the hopes that through collaboration, the industry could grow the number of creatine consumers from an estimated 35 million in 2025 to 1 billion by 2035.
“The main focus of our current work is finalizing the stabilization of creatine monohydrate in various liquid solutions and foods that contain moisture,” he previously told NutraIngredients. “Over the past 30 years, this has proven to be an almost impossible technical challenge to overcome. Together with our partners, we are well on our way to solving this problem and are aiming to make an announcement about this in September or October of this year.”
Jennings has identified 24-month creatine stability as the holy grail.
Overcoming the stability challenge
For stability in its ready-to-drink formulation, the creators of CREATEA turned to Glanbia Nutrition. The multinational nutrition company launched CreaBev in 2019 as a “soluble and stable creatine monohydrate for superior performance beverages” delivered through a patent-pending and propietary encapsulation technology.
According to stability study data on the Glanbia website, 30% of creatine monohydrate in CreaBev remained stable at pH 2.8 after a year, 42% of creatine monohydrate in CreaBev remained stable under cold-fill processing at pH 4.5 after a year, and 73% of creatine monohydrate in CreaBev remained stable under UHT processing at pH 7.0 after a year.
Savage said that CREATEA—which is being cold-fill processed at a pH of 3.8—is formulated with 7,500 mg of CreaBev in order to meet the 1,500 mg listed on label at the end of shelf life since creatine inevitably converts in an acidic pH.
This year, the marketing project took a more natural and cost-conscious approach to formulation, putting forward both a natural sweetener and flavor and reducing the number of branded-collaborator ingredients in the mix.
The packaging, toned-down from XPO NRG’s Formula 1-inspired design concept, is influenced by the detailed and colorful botanical chromolithographs of Köhler’s Medicinal Plants of the late 1800s.
“For CREATEA, we focused on a beverage innovation goal but wanted to more closely emulate the product development process you see in the industry—including cost considerations,” said Ben Kane, CREATEA project coordinator. “The formulation you see in CREATEA Mighty Mango could go straight to market.”
Savage and Kane confirmed that, like XPO NRG, they have no plans to commercialize the beverage but did spill the tea that CREATEA would be joined by Skinny Bites and Longevispheres at participanting supplier booths in Las Vegas. The round, snackable concepts are inspired by the earth’s layered structure—crust, mantle, outer core and inner core—with functional ingredients built into each layer.
Skinny Bites, a raspberry lemon cake appetite-suppressing snack, integrates HTBA’s B12, Plantible’s Rubi protein, NuLiv Science’s Inno Slim, Ingredients by Nature’s Eriomin and Prinova’s Treha trehalose. The longevity-promoting pumpkin-spice Longevispheres layer Helaina’s bio-identical effera lactoferrin, Prinova’s pea protein, OmniActive’s Lutemax, NNB Nutrition’s spermidine and milk protein crisps from Actus Nutrition for outer core texture.
CREATEA will be available across the SupplySide show floor on Oct. 29 and 30 at both sampling stations and at collaborator booths: PLT Health Solutions (Booth #4855), Glanbia Nutritional (Booth #3964), NNB Nutrition (Booth #5154), NutriScience Innovations (Booth #4243) and NutraMedia (Booth #7965). Three separate kiosks located in Lobby B, C and F will also stock the beverage throughout the show.
