Leading Premium Ready-To-Drink Tea Features New Look Highlighting Pure, All-Natural Ingredients
PURCHASE, N.Y. – May 9, 2007 – The Pepsi-Lipton Tea Partnership today announced that Lipton® PureLeafTM, the leading national brand made with fresh-brewed tea, is arriving on store shelves this month with all-natural ingredients, new packaging and updated graphics. Formerly known as Lipton Original, Lipton PureLeaf now offers pure, delicious tea with no artificial flavors or colors.
“Consumers have told us how important it is that their tea is pure, straight from the leaf, as nature intended,” said Stacy Reichert, vice president and general manager, Pepsi-Lipton Tea Partnership. “As leaders in the ready-to-drink tea category, our master tea blenders have the expertise to produce the kinds of healthy, great tasting teas consumers are seeking.”
Lipton PureLeaf is tea that is pure and natural, made with fresh-brewed tea from tea leaves handpicked by Lipton’s master blenders at the peak of freshness. The select tea leaves are then brewed to create a refreshing tea with full-bodied taste. Sweetened with real sugar*, the new Lipton PureLeaf line delivers the same great taste with the benefits of antioxidants that consumers have come to expect from Lipton. Scientific research has shown that antioxidants in tea, like fruits and vegetables, make it an important part of a healthy diet, although tea is not a substitute for fruits and vegetables. Lipton PureLeaf Tea naturally contains flavanoid antioxidants, which help neutralize free radicals, molecules that can damage cells.
The Lipton PureLeaf packaging sports a new label and is offered in sleek 16-ounce glass bottles available individually or in six-packs. Lipton PureLeaf comes in Green, White and Black teas. The eleven sweetened and unsweetened flavors include Green Tea with Honey, White Tea with Tangerine, Black Tea Sweetened, Black Tea Unsweetened, Black Tea with Lemon and Black Tea with Raspberry, among others.
*Lipton PureLeaf is also available in two diet varieties, PureLeaf Diet Black Tea with Lemon and PureLeaf Diet Black Tea Extra Sweet, which contain sucralose, an artificial sweetener.
The launch of Lipton PureLeaf will be supported by in-store sampling, promotions as well as print and online advertising. More information about the product can be found at www.liptonpureleaf.com.
About Lipton® Tea
Lipton® Tea, the world’s leading tea brand, is available in more than 180 countries worldwide. With more than 100 years of tasting, buying, and blending expertise, Lipton® Tea provides today’s health-conscious consumer with a variety of convenient, great-tasting, healthy tea products — from hot tea to ready to drink to ice tea mixes. Lipton® Tea employs expert tea-tasters, masters in the harvesting, production, purchase, transport and blending of the more than 3,000 types of tea, who source its teas from as many as 25-35 countries to ensure tea leaf integrity, quality and freshness.
The Pepsi-Lipton Tea Partnership is a joint venture between Pepsi-Cola North America and Unilever.
About Pepsi
Purchase, N.Y.-based Pepsi-Cola North America (http://www.pepsi.com/) is the refreshment beverage unit of PepsiCo, Inc., in the United States and Canada. Its U.S. brands include Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Jazz, Pepsi ONE, Wild Cherry Pepsi, Diet Pepsi Vanilla, Mountain Dew, Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Code Red, Mountain Dew LiveWire, Sierra Mist, Sierra Mist Free, Mug, Tropicana Twister Soda, Aquafina, Aquafina FlavorSplash, Aquafina Sparkling, Aquafina Alive, Quaker Milk Chillers, Ben & Jerry’s MilkShakes, Dole and Ocean Spray single-serve juices, Tropicana Juice Drinks, IZZE and SoBe. The company also makes and markets North America’s best-selling ready-to-drink coffees via a joint venture with Starbucks.
About Unilever
Unilever [NYSE: UL, UN], one of the world’s largest consumer products companies, aims to add vitality to life by meeting everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene and personal care. Each day, around the world, consumers make 150 million decisions to purchase Unilever products. The company has a portfolio of brands that make people feel good, look good and get more out of life.
In the United States these brands include recognized names such as: Axe, “all,” Ben & Jerry’s, Bertolli, Breyers, Caress, Country Crock, Degree, Dove personal care products, Hellmann’s, Knorr, Lipton, Popsicle, Promise, Q-Tips, Skippy, Slim-Fast, Snuggle, Suave, Sunsilk and Vaseline. All of the preceding brand names are registered trademarks of the Unilever Group of Companies. Dedicated to serving consumers and the communities where we live, work and play, Unilever in the United States employs approximately 13,000 people in more than 60 office and manufacturing sites in 24 states and Puerto Rico – generating nearly $10 billion in sales in 2006. For more information, visit www.unileverusa.com.
Contact: Nicole Bradley
Pepsi-Cola North America
(914) 253-2964
nicole.bradley@pepsi.com
