The beverage company Chi Forest has in no time become one of China’s largest manufacturer of ice tea, vitamin water, and low-sugar soft drinks. It was founded in Beijing in 2016 as Genki Forest but rebranded to Chi Forest in 2023. In 2024 they export to around 40 countries World wide.

In August 2022 they launched a cola and have backed it up with heavy marketing campaigns.

According to Chi Forest’s CEO the idea of adding a cola to the product line was first introduced in 2019. But it is not easy being a giant soft drink manufacturer in China where Coca-Cola and PepsiCo has a firm grip on the soft drink market. Rumors has it that the two giants met in January 2022 and agreed on crushing Chi Forest within that year.

Maybe this was the catalyst for Chi Forest to launch a cola with big fanfare in July 2022 and is available in countries like Singapore, Japan, Algeria, Australia – and even on Coca-Cola and Pepsi’s home turf; the United States of America!

In 2024 Chi Forest is still alive and kicking but it is unknown if they have taken significant market shares from the big ones.

Cola is written 可乐 in simplified Chinese. The two characters are kě and lè which combined mimics the sound “cola”.

The first character means can, approve, need, but, and the second character means joy, music, be fond of.

Sources: Coca-Cola and PepsiCo determined to kill Genki Forest this year (cmgm.net, February 18, 2022)