New Peruvian cola packs a punch with dash of coca

Amid clanging machinery and the whiffs of steam on the factory floor, a new company is producing a soft drink that its creators pledge will ...

Amid clanging machinery and the whiffs of steam on the factory floor, a new company is producing a soft drink that its creators pledge will transform this Andean country, if successful.

That is a big if, because while KDrink is filled with vitamins, calcium and proteins that attract health-conscious consumers, its most important ingredient is coca, the much-maligned green leaf used to make cocaine. That same leaf will provide the drink’s kick.

But that has not stopped the Peruvian maker, Kokka Royal Food & Drink, from filling 200,000 of the 10-ounce bottles since operations began in February. Nor has it kept Kokka Royal’s lawyers from negotiating with health authorities in Europe to secure import permits, which KDrink’s makers say would convert an oddity of a concoction into a real competitor for the world’s big-name beverages.

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‘‘You don’t get this from Gatorade,’’ said Anselm Pi Rambla, the Spanish investor who has spearheaded the project. ‘‘It does not give you a high like crack cocaine. But it does give you energy you can use.’’

In Peru, that pitch — that KDrink is natural and good for consumers — has the beverage flying off the shelves of some of Peru’s biggest supermarket chains. Though priced at $1 a bottle, far more than what other beverages sell for, KDrink is selling about 50,000 bottles a month.

But it is the possibility that KDrink could be sold abroad that is seen as a tantalising solution for poverty-stricken coca farmers who are periodically forced to eradicate their illicit crops in Washington-backed anti-drug efforts.

The Peruvian government contends that 83 per cent of the coca grown here goes toward the narcotics trade, with the rest going for medicinal and cultural uses permitted by law. But farmers, who insist that more than half the crop is legal, block roads or march in the capital, Lima, every few weeks to prod the government into reversing its policies.

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It is too early to predict if KDrink will ever compete with Coca-Cola — no major country has yet permitted the drink to be imported, since the coca leaf is banned outside of the Andes.

But that has not prevented Kokka Royal from embarking on negotiations with government officials in Italy, the Netherlands and Spain in an effort to open doors for a product with a taste somewhere between iced tea and apple juice. That is not to say that the coca leaf, prominently displayed on the bright KDrink label, is not the main selling point. Indeed, Kokka Royal is not shy about acknowledging that the drink contains coca alkaloids, a component that, in each bottle of KDrink, has minuscule traces of cocaine.

‘‘In Europe, the enticement will be because it’s the coca leaf,’’ said Cristina Tudela, the general manager of Kokka Royal. ‘‘They may like the taste, but No.1 for them is the coca.’’