Cawston Press responds to UK Sugar Levy with new recipes

Cawston Press has responded to the looming UK Sugar Levy by releasing a new range which contains no added sugar.

The brand will exclusively use pressed fruit to flavour the new range, and Cawston Press claims this move reduces the average amount of sugar in the range by 31% compared to the brand’s previous recipes.

Each drink in the range will contain under 90 calories, and four flavours will be released: Rhubarb, cloudy apple, elderflower lemonade and ginger beer.

This move comes as Cawston Press has committed to cutting 300 tonnes of sugar from soft drinks the brand sells in the UK from April to December 2018.

Cawston Press managing director Steve Kearns said: “Cawston Press was started because we were frustrated by the lack of good quality soft drinks made from simple, natural ingredients, without the preservatives and artificial nonsense that give fizzy drinks a bad name.

“We believe people deserve better and that hasn’t changed. Artificial sweeteners just aren’t us and mask the taste of our delicious ingredients.

“It seems a shame that despite many sectors in food and drink moving forward, for the most part, soft drinks are still stuck in a time warp. We are proud to be doing things differently and showing the rest of the industry how it should be done.

“In some cases, we are upping the fruit juice content by up to 4 times per recipe. For a small company like ours, that’s an enormous investment.

“We know from our 30 years experience in pressing fruit that nature does it best and it’s a small price to pay to know we’re bringing the best quality, best-tasting drinks to the market. We believe in what we are doing and are excited to be paving the way for the future of soft drinks.”

The no added sugar line will be available from several UK retailers such as Waitrose, Sainsburys and Tesco and other specialist stores.

Single 330ml cans will have a suggested retail price of £1.19, and £3.99 for a four can multipack.