Bottled Water Market Quickly Turning Chinese

The world’s bottled water demand is heading to China, faster than many industry insiders expected.

According to beverage industry market research firm “Canadean”, when it comes to bottled water consumption, the Chinese are drinking their way ahead of the United States. By Canadean’s estimates, they were to surpass bottled water drinking Americans by the end of 2013.

Over the past seven years, China has doubled its share of the global bottled water market. They had around a two billion litre difference in consumption between them and the U.S. in 2012, but by the end of 2013 China were forecasted to be one billion litres ahead of the U.S. according to a Canadean report.

In per capita terms, however, the picture is very different. China is running below the global, per capita bottled water consumption average of 30 litres per person. With over a billion people to count for, China’s per capita consumption is just round one-fifth of that of the U.S. That means there is plenty of room to grow this segment in the future.

Bloomberg News in 2013 reported that Mr. Gilles Duc, Nestle SA’s manager of their Chinese water division stated “China is a key priority for us! The market is increasing a lot and we want to participate in that growth.”

While the tough economy and green opposition to bottles are weighing on the water business in Europe and the U.S., its growing fast in China where industrial and agricultural expansion have polluted supplies.

Sales of bottled water in China will climb to US$16 billion by 2017, versus US$9.0 billion and US$1.0 billion in 2000, according to researcher Euromonitor International. The market in Western Europe will remain flat at US$21 billion and North America will increase 18% to US$26 billion over the same period, Euromonitor predicts.

 Arctic Blue Waters can safely provide pure Arctic water in bulk and can transport it by food-grade ships to China for bottling hygienically for distribution to the retail market.

Arctic Blue Waters is seeking a major beverage manufacturer/distributor in China that would consider bottling our Arctic bulk water from Alaska. The bottling plant of this firm should be within 100 km of water storage tanks located at the Humen Sea Port, Dogguan, China. The raw pure Arctic bulk water could be transported in food-grade tanks by truck from the storage tanks at the port to the bottling plant.