FI Asia 2025: Arla Foods Ingredients showcases sugar-free Protein Soda
02 Oct 2025 | Arla Foods Ingredients
At Fi Asia 2025, Arla Foods Ingredients unveiled its Protein Soda, a refreshing soft drink powered by Lacprodan BLG-100, a clear whey protein isolate. We spoke with Nikolaj Nøeddebo Beck in Bangkok about how this guilt-free soda delivers 10 g of protein with great taste, no bitterness, and zero empty calories — tapping into the booming better-for-you beverage trend.
Hello everybody.
This is William Bradford Nichols here at Food ingredients first, and I'm live at Food Ingredients Asia in Bangkok, Thailand.
And today we are speaking, speaking with Nikolai Notable Beck, the senior account manager for performance and functional nutrition at all of Food Ingredients.
Hello, Nikolai, how are you today?
Hey, William, I'm good.
Pleasure to have you here.
Thank you for coming.
Yeah, we're excited to talk to you.
Can you tell us a little bit about what your main focuses are this year for the Vita Foods Asia show?
Absolutely.
So we have different, I think everything is pretty much centered around the high protein trends.
We have a lot of different concepts spanning across from ice cream, yogurts, milk-based beverages, and then one of our newest innovations is a Sparkling soda, so just like a protein enriched protein formula.
Can you tell me a little bit about with the protein, is there like a sports nutrition trend in the region that you're sort of reaching with this?
Can you tell us about that?
There's definitely a movement going on in the region.
If we center on Thailand, yes, it's still a pretty new market.
Maybe it's around $35 million US dollars as the sports nutrition segment, so it's actually not that big compared to it's only 1% of as a total.
But when we look into many of the core markets in like Australia, Japan, South Korea, and seeing the development they've been done.
And then compared to Thailand where they are today, where they were a few years ago, and also looking into the outlook, so definitely Thailand is one of the big potentials we see in this region.
That's also why we are here at the Food Ingredients Asia in Bangkok.
You've mentioned some of the concept products that you have to show this.
Can you let us see some of those and maybe give us some of the information about it?
Absolutely.
So one of the newest concepts we have and also highlighting here at the FIA is is this sparkling concept.
So it's like a protein soda.
So it's tapping just into the what we call.
Satisfying craving, so consumers are looking for more healthy alternatives without all the guilt of consuming too many calories.
So this is the only calorie contribution is basically just from the protein.
And the protein itself is is our new lac protein BLD 100.
So what is interesting about this ingredient is it's a, it's a new type of clear whey protein isolate.
It works perfectly in a sparkling concept.
And gives less astringency, no bitterness, and then you still have a perfectly clear, transparent soda.
That's great and 10 g of protein for that little can.
That is true, yes.
So in this small serving size it's 10 g.
That equals 4% of protein.
We have in fact tested this one with the double amount, so 8% or 20 g in this cane, and it still works perfectly.
Great taste, stable, and all the refreshments you need from such a healthy alternative.
That's great.
Clear Clear whey protein has been one of my favorite innovations I've seen, period, as far as sports nutrition and not having to taste like chocolate, chalky chocolate drinks and stuff all the time.
It's a great thing.
It's true because that's all the response we've seen here at the event.
All the people walking by tasting, they are so amazed that you can actually make something tasting like this.
Others have tasted others have tried using a more more available clear whey protein isolated type, but it does come with more bitterness and not the same end result as this one because the mass consumers, they want something that is more similar to what they know.
So if they're having a regular soda.
And then you add in the protein.
They don't want to taste these proteins.
They just want the functional benefits of the protein, but they don't want to taste them.
And this is a perfect sparkling star, an example of that.
Can you tell us about any emerging trends you see for Thailand and the region in the future?
So in Thailand there's a lot of the milk-based beverages and and as mentioned before, maybe the sports nutrition segment or the sports market is not that huge, but that also count on data and like a serving size of 20 g.
So this one is not even included in that market size.
Volume of potential.
So when we look into the more milk-based beverages in that category, it's even bigger than sports nutrition.
And now we see still a continuous interest for higher protein formats.
They want to push the boundaries, so 25 or 30 g in one bottle of milk is not enough.
They want even more protein.
We see it's moving into the yogurt category, spoon of yogurt, drinking yogurt.
Consumers also want something that is higher in the protein content.
So that's that's definitely what we see also outside Thailand.
But in this region we see Thailand is like the trendsetter.
So what is happening in Europe and the US, Thailand is one of the, in Southeast Asia, one of the countries that is the first one to basically take on these trends, and then it will slowly evolve to the rest of the region.
Nikolai, is there anything else you'd like to say about this before we sign off for the day?
No, I'm just excited to be here and see all the good reception of of our products, and it's going to be a great show.
Thanks for talking to us and we look forward to hearing a lot more from all the food ingredients in the future.
