Dextro Energy

About Dextro Energy

Dextro Energy is the German brand under which dextrose tablets, sports nutrition and food supplements are sold; its wordmark is the red block lettering crossed by a yellow arrow that signs the front of every pack.^[1] The best-known article is the cube of eight scored glucose tablets, and the Federal Court of Justice upheld the registration of that tablet shape as a three-dimensional mark on 18 October 2017.^[2] Around it the range runs to energy gels, bars, isotonic drinks, chews and electrolyte and salt tablets.^[3] The brand is held by Dextro Energy GmbH & Co. KG of Krefeld, which runs the dextro-energy.com shop, and has belonged to the Hamburg group Zertus since Unilever sold the business on 5 March 2005.^[4][3]

The line began in 1927 with a white dextrose powder sold through pharmacies and drugstores by Deutsche Maizena GmbH, later Deutsche Maizena Werke AG.^[3][5] Maizena was the German subsidiary of the American Corn Products Refining Company, which became CPC International in 1969 and was renamed Bestfoods in 1998, Markenlexikon giving 1997; Unilever absorbed the group in 2000.^[3][5] The powder was registered as Dextropur in 1929, after the medical term dextrose purum, and doctors prescribed it as a tonic; the cube form was launched in 1935 as Dextro Energen, and grocery retail followed from 1960.^[3][5] The pack was marketed as official competition food at the 1936 Berlin and 1972 Munich Olympic Games.^[3] The name was anglicised to Dextro Energy in 2002, and the Dextro Energy Power Drink, a mix of fruit juice, dextrose, guarana and caffeine, followed in 2003.^[3][5] On 5 March 2005 Unilever sold the business, around 160 people in Krefeld on an estimated turnover of up to 30 million euro, to Zertus GmbH of Hamburg, and the brand has carried the sports-nutrition range built out since.^[3]