Congo Brands Australia, the local distributor behind Logan Paul and KSI’s PRIME hydration and energy drinks, entered voluntary administration on 7 July 2026. Alice Ruhe of The Ruhe Group was appointed administrator. Filings showed the Melbourne company holding A$7.92m in debts against A$84,855 in cash.
Staff had already been let go by the time creditors met on 17 July. A separate winding-up application from packaging supplier Orora Group, filed in the Federal Court in June, was due to be heard the same month.
The Australian filing is the sharpest single data point in a four-year slide for a brand that once called itself the fastest-growing beverage company in history.
From a billion bottles to a writedown
PRIME launched in January 2022, co-founded by YouTubers Logan Paul and Olajide “KSI” Olatunji alongside Congo Brands, which held the majority stake. By November 2023, the brand announced it had sold its billionth bottle, and Paul separately claimed the company would close the year at $1.2bn in revenue.
That was the peak. The Australian accounts tell the story of what came after. Revenue at Congo Brands Australia fell from roughly A$31m in 2023 to A$14.5m in 2024, a decline of about 53%. Inventory holdings dropped from A$28.9m to A$1.7m, a fall that included a A$4.57m stock writedown. The company posted a net loss of A$1.42m for the year.
The pattern repeats everywhere PRIME has published numbers. UK turnover fell from £112.2m to £32.8m between 2023 and 2024, a drop of roughly 71%, while net profit collapsed by more than 90% to £312,393. In the United States, Circana data put the brand’s trailing twelve-month sales decline at 42%, with 2025 revenue projected around $300m against a 2023 peak above $1.2bn.
Retail pricing moved with the numbers. In South Africa, where Checkers launched PRIME nationwide in 2023, the retailer cut the price from R39.99 to R10 a bottle within a year, clearing imported stock ahead of a switch to local manufacturing.
Arsenal walks away
Sponsorship was central to PRIME’s growth story. The brand became Arsenal’s official hydration partner in 2022, a deal that put PRIME on shelves at the Emirates Stadium throughout home matchdays. That three-year contract expired in 2025 and was not renewed, with the club reported to be in talks with other brands for a successor partner.
Congo Brands also made cuts closer to home. The company laid off UK retail staff responsible for placing PRIME in stores in early 2026, and a separate WARN notice showed 155 jobs cut at its Lewisville, Texas operation in late 2025.
One founder, two very different outcomes
The clearest evidence that PRIME’s problem sits with the brand rather than its operators comes from Congo Brands’ other major property. Alani Nu, the energy drink line the company built with founders Katy and Haydn Schneider, was acquired by Celsius Holdings for $1.8bn in February 2025, on 2024 revenue of $595m and EBITDA of $137m. Congo’s leadership stayed on as advisors through the transition.
Same operators, same years, same company structure. One brand sold for $1.8bn. The other now has a subsidiary in administration.
What comes next
PRIME has not stopped moving. Congo Brands launched Prime Ice in early 2025 and a ready-to-drink protein line in January 2026, and is reformulating its flagship hydration drink into a lower-sugar Prime Zero. The brand remains stocked in major retailers in the US and UK.
Whether Prime Protein and Prime Zero can rebuild the repeat-purchase habit the original hydration line never established is the question Congo Brands now has to answer with a much smaller marketing budget than the one that built the billion-bottle run.
