Youngsters bid to become business leaders (From Darlington and Stockton Times)

Youngsters bid to become business leaders

5:00pm Wednesday 6th February 2013 in News

BUSINESS minded students hope their idea for a new soft drink will win them a national competition run by Coca-Cola.

The Barnard Castle School pupils have won through to the North-East final of the Coca Cola Enterprises Real Business Challenge.

The six-strong team of 14-15-year-olds had to generate ideas for the design, marketing, distribution and production of a new soft drink.

The youngsters decided to create a healthy sports smoothie.

Team leader Jamie Preston, 15, said: “Our drink Ecogo is a healthy smoothie which is aimed at a young active market and it’s made with 100 per cent natural ingredients.

“We devised the slogan, For the Pace of the Human Race, because we want to encourage everybody to be healthy and feel energetic.

“We also wanted to minimise our environmental impact so we’ve designed our product packaging to be 100 per cent recyclable too.”

The North-East final is at St James Park, Newcastle, on Friday (February 8) when the students will pitch their proposal to a panel of experts from Coca-Cola.

Youngsters from ten teams from across the region will battle for the North East title.

The North-East winners will join six other regional teams to compete in a national final to find the overall champion.

Gary Bishop, head of business studies and economics at the school, said: “Our students have learned so much and just taking part has been an extremely valuable and rewarding experience for them.”