Fizzy milk's ready to burst into Christmas

Richard Revell believes his fizzy flavoured milk creation mo2 will reshape milk drinks. Photo / Steven McNicholl

Dairy farmer Richard Revell is planning to launch his fizzy milk drink mo2 by Christmas and is looking at potential partners here and overseas.

Te Aroha farmer Revell started selling mo2 in June to about 25 outlets in the Hamilton area as part of market research, having had the idea about 6 or 7 years ago.

"Where the idea came from was just thinking bubbles get added to everything, even to wine for fun," he said.

Mo2 is 95 per cent milk, with some sugar and a cola or lemonade flavour.

"I believe that what Red Bull did to traditional soft drinks we can do to traditional milk drinks."

Initial research showed consumers would push the company towards the soft drinks part of the market and so they used a low-fat milk which means the product does not actually taste like milk.

The company was in the process of developing more traditional milk flavours such as chocolate and strawberry, although at this stage was likely to keep the present cola and lemonade products.

"The consumer's saying to us 'Hey we love the idea, we love the concept of the carbonation but we'd like to taste something that tastes like milk,' which is actually a little bit different to what we expected but that's why we're doing this [research]."

Revell hoped to launch nationally by Christmas and be exporting in a year.

Mo2 is a fresh product that needs chilling and has a 32-day shelf life but Revell is working on a long-life product which would have a shelf life of six to nine months.

He wanted to get branding and packaging for a new bottle completed and the formulation ready for long-life production of the more traditional milk flavours by the end of November, before looking to bring in potentially one or more partners.

There could be long-life versions of the present cola and lemonade products, depending on what happened with the traditional flavours versus the old ones.

Revell was looking at potential partners in New Zealand, Australia and Asia.

Long-life production was probably six months away.

"In 12 months' time we hope to be a New Zealand milk beverage company that's got four or five different products and one of them just happens to be mo2."

Revell set up the company SPG to develop the product and own the machines but contracts out the manufacturing. The company had patents in place or pending internationally for its production process.

"If you just try and carbonate milk without using the technology the whole thing turns to foam," he said.

"We've had a lot of offers from overseas to license the technology that we've got but I want to make sure everything's right before we actually start getting bigger."

Revell has spent more than $2 million developing the product and has pretty much bet the farm on its success. "Most probably twice over now."

"We still believe 100 per cent that it's going to [succeed]."

Some might see mo2 as a risky bet for a man trained as an accountant but Revell sees himself as quite conservative. "I just obviously believe in it," he said.