Her Incrediballs startup follows Ethique — an eco-friendly shampoo, conditioning, deodorant and body bar business — she founded, and valued at about $100 million when she exited in 2024.
An initial drink tablet range coming in four flavours is designed to dissolve in water or other liquids to create a flavoured, sugar-free 350ml drink without bottling or plastic packaging.
This is being released as a sustainable alternative to the 583 billion single-use plastic bottles produced globally every year by soft drink manufacturers.
The drink tablets took seven years to develop at a cost of about $500,000 using pioneering co-crystal technology developed by University of Bradford scientists in Britain to stabilise them.
Miss West said she was targeting the business to reach $1m revenue in 2027 and longer term was aiming to create a $1billion annual turnover export business.
She has set a slow pace for the first six months to iron out supply or other kinks, but wanted to put out an ambitious target.
"I met Mike Todd, the former CMO of Air NZ years and years ago and I used to pussyfoot around having these big ambitions because I felt ridiculous saying that, and he said ‘if you want to be a billion-dollar brand start saying that and believing it’ and ever since then I’ve tried to take that advice."
An effervescent tablet format no longer requiring single-use packaging was an industry potentially larger than the Ethique market, she said.
Developing the drink tablets had taken more money and longer than she first thought.
She hoped they would be an immediate success and was relying on a large support community of 15,000 followers to provide more feedback on flavours and further development.
The qualified biochemist is pondering future applications such as the health, pharmaceutical and wellness markets as well as charitable fields where water quality and vitamin deficiencies are a concern.
"If for some reason this isn’t the avenue for this technology we have a few other ideas. Something like 65% of people can’t or have trouble swallowing tablets and I’m one of them and this is effervescent technology that would get rid of plastic bottles and the tin that Beroccas come in so there is a multitude of ways across all sorts of industries we are going to start exploring into, but Incrediballs is first, hopefully."
Card packaging is formulated without plastic laminate so it can be put in a home compost or recycled. The ink on the box is biodegradable and water-based with algae-derived inks next on the list.
She said single-use drinks containers were unnecessary when safe water was literally on tap in many people’s kitchens.
"The way we treat our planet is pretty gross and I think a single-use philosophy in general is pretty awful. ... We take something that has taken thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years to create and use it in what, an hour, to drink after a hell of a lot of resources have gone into it to turn it into a bottle and then it goes straight into a bin. It’s so wasteful and having an enormous impact."
The ambition was to fundamentally rethink how drinks were made, transported and sold.
Unstable effervescent tablets must be sealed in plastic or metal, but the stabilisation challenge solved by British scientists had opened the way for a shelf-stable and air-stable format.
The simple chemistry was extremely difficult to control which explained why major pharmaceutical players had been unsuccessful, she said.
The patented system wraps active ingredients like citric acid and sodium bicarbonate with compounds such as nicotinamide and creatine, preventing the reaction from occurring until the tablet is fully immersed in water.
The first flavours of cola, grapefruit, orange and pear will be sold online from today.
They are expected to be followed by more flavours and a future range is expected to be released with more healthier ingredients in a few months.
The company has plans to expand into functional beverage formats, using natural ingredients such as manuka, kawakawa and kiwifruit extracts.
Miss West said initial interest from supermarkets and offshore markets has been strong, with major transtasman retailers expressing interest.
Australia, followed by the United States in quick succession was the goal as well as Britain, Canada and Japan.
A relief from the pressures of business has been planting native trees and shrubs at a lifestyle block near Christchurch.
Her collection of 65 animals on the small lot includes horses, highland cattle, goats, frogs, fish and many wild birds.
