Dublin was recently the venue for US-based functional drinks brand CELSIUS – its international and global expansion hub is headquartered in the Irish capital – to update the convenience channel on where it’s going from this September.
Specifically, that involves kicking off the next phase of the hugely successful launch of of the USA-born, sugar-free fitness and energy drink, and its LIVE.FIT.GO. platform – and includes the ambassadors of Team CELSIUS: Arsenal and England’s Declan Rice and Irish Olympian sprinter Rhasidat Adeleke. The brand will be connecting to active, social, and performance-led occasions through its ambassadors and market-relevant partnerships.
The CELSIUS story began in 2005 in Delray, Florida, and the brand eventually grew into an $18 billion lifestyle giant – in 2022, PepsiCo invested $550 million for an 8.5 per cent stake and domestic distribution rights, meaning that CELSIUS instantly appeared in 95 per cent of mainstream US stores, not just gyms and vitamin shops, prompting articles with titles such as, “How Celsius Became the King of Energy Drinks”. The rest is history.
Then the company decided to cross the Atlantic and landed here in February 2025 with a distribution partnership at Suntory Beverage & Food GB&I, which is going so well that CELSIUS says it doesn’t want to change anything.
“Our plan is to work exclusively with them for UK,” says CELSIUS international president Garrett Quigley. “They're a scale business and they know the energy market really well with Lucozade. They're very clear where Lucozade Sport and Lucozade Energy fit, and they're very clear that CELSIUS is more of a stimulant type energy than Lucozade, and that we complement the portfolio. So it’s amazing, steadily working with them to build share.”
Early this year, CELSIUS added four new fruit-forward, finely flavoured options that chimed with the broadest uptake of consumer lifestyles in the purview of the LIVE.FIT.GO. platform. Other events and installations followed thick and fast to spread the word – and it is working. Distribution over the summer is up 60 per cent, matched by a 58 per cent uplift in sales, which represents almost five per cent of 2026 total energy category growth.
Quigley says the brand has generated more sales over the past three months than the nearest 35 in-growth brands combined.
The two-day briefing – which included a trip to watch the Arsenal versus Real Betis match, which was a bit of a disaster (if only Declan Rice had been playing!) – revealed not only that CELSIUS is building momentum in Great Britain and Ireland, but that the growth is showing up in the commercial metrics c-store retailers care about: rising share, stronger distribution, improved rate of sale, and growing awareness.
Image: AMG
Quigley says that the brand’s sugar-free momentum “reinforces where the category is going, and CELSIUS is gaining traction in one of the most important growth areas of energy drinks”.
Most importantly for Asian Trader readers, the brand’s clear direction is to go deeper where it is doing best – and that means convenience. Quigley wants to see all four flavours in every store, and has good reason to think that will soon be the case – especially the energy category is forecast to grow 14 per cent in 2026, reaching a value of £2.3bn, and being projected to add another £1.3bn to that over the next four years: CELSIUS wants to grab a bigger share of that and sees convenience’s reach and local granularity as key.
“Convenience is so important because, particularly as a new brand, that's where people try you. When you go to the bigger multiples, that's a take-home,” says Quigley. “You fill your pantry with what you already use, but trial in in convenience is critical, and that's where CELSIUS should be, in a cold fridge, for on-the-go consumption.
“And it's also the location of convenience stores, where the consumer is going or where they're coming from. From their workplace, coming out for lunch, on the way to the gym. We get at the young professionals, fitness locations, and so on. So convenience is critical to us, you know, being right there.”
It’s been a fantastic 18 months in the UK market for CELSIUS and the future looks bubbly and energetic.
“There’s a lot of people looking for a healthier lifestyle,” says Quigley. “Not everybody's running on their way to the gym. They just like to live a healthier life, live fit proposition. And CELSIUS is tapping into that. We know now the ingredients of success from the US. We know the markets where we can go, and the UK is is one where we absolutely see the opportunity.”
He explained that Celsius is riding the wave of a changing energy drink sector. “Energy has changed,” he says, “it's becoming bigger. It was a small piece of total soft drinks, largely single-serve – no two-litre bottles and so on…. The scale has now come in, and the shift that's going on within that is zero sugar accelerating the mix.”
But for it all to work, we are happy to report that CELSIUS recognises it needs needs independent retailers on board.
“We talked about the consumer finding us through community and their friends and it's the same with retailers,” Quigley summed up .”You know, the retailers trust each other. They understand they're all part of a network. And when they see, ‘Oh, he's now stocking CELSIUS,’ then they get that.”
It could be the start of a beautiful partnership.
At the match: CELSIUS wins; Arsenal did not.Image: AMG