Almost all the major International and national brands water bottles are available In Indian market right from the malls to railway stations, bus stations, grocery stores and even at panatela’s (local cigarette vendors – street side) shop. A few years ago bottle water was considered as the rich people’s choice, but now it is penetrated even in rural areas. The growth and status of Indian Bottled Industry in comparison with Western or Asian market, India is far behind in terms of quantum, infrastructure, professionalism and standards implementation.
The per capita imposition of mineral water in India is a mere 0. 5-liter compared to 111 liter in Europe and 45-liter in LISA. Also As per UN study conducted in 122 countries, in connection with water quality, Indian’s number was dismal 120. In comparison to global standards Indian’s bottled water segment is largely unregulated. APS Abdul Koala Ex-President of India has urged youngsters on July 17, 2010 to be aware of water conservation techniques to avoid grave water corals In future. “It Is so sad that today, people are forced to buy water In plastic bottles. I am told that bottled water industry is worth nearly 10000 core rupees and even big companies like the Coke and Pepsi are involved in this bottling of water and making money. So, it is imperative that we ought to save water,” he added. Do not be surprised if today’s bottles water industry becomes next Oil industry by 2025. If oil is the focal point of world conflict now, it is possible that water will be the next battleground among monopoly capitalists and even among nations.
Prices of water and water services keep on increasing because most of our public water utilities have already been privatized by the government. Private beverage and water companies have been granted by the government with permits to practically control and operate our natural springs and water sources In natural parks and protected areas for water production and processing plants. ‘ ‘ ‘The bottled water category Is growing at a rapid pace. The branded market Is 40 % of the category and non- branded contributes to of the market. The category is growing at a rate of 30%.
Visible is the market leader in category. Three key players mainly dominate the Indian Bottled Water Market Apparel, Visible, Coca Cola India Inc. (Kinney) and Pepsico India Holdings Put. Limited (Aquifer). This market is expected to grow at a 30% rate in the next 7 years. In 2010 the revenue generated by this market was over $250 million. Bottled Water Industry in India The overall packaged bottled water in India is estimated to touch the RSI 10,000 carmaker in the 2012-13 fiscal, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CARR) of 19%, says a new report by Icon Marketing Consultants.
Presently, this market is estimated at RSI 8,000 core, and could touch RSI 5,000 core by 201 5, the report adds. While Visible mineral Water continues as the top brand with a 36% share among cantonal players, Coca-Cola’s Kinney follows with 25% share, followed by Aquifer at 15%. Other smaller brands include Apparel Agra’s Bailey, Kingfisher and McDowell No. 1, according to the report. The global bottled water market, which saw an increase of 40-45% over the past five years, is currently valued at close to US$ 85-90 billion, the report adds.
The domestic market is split between three sets of players national brands with a pan India presence worth around RSI 4,000 core, local brands manufactured by registered plants but restricted to regions estimated to have a combined turnover of RSI 2,400 core and unrealized local brands estimated at RSI 1,600 core. The report estimates that there are over 2,500 brands in this category, of which over three- fourths are local. The non-traditional category, or bulk packs, (with over 5 liter capacity) is growing rapidly, and has a current share of over 40% share. The rising trend of bulk water consumption in homes and institutional segments will pave the way for bulk water packs to acquire half of the total bottled water market within next four-five years,” the report adds. According to a national-level study, making bottled eater is today a cottage industry in the country. Leave alone the metros, where a bottled-water manufacturer can be found even in a one-room shop, in every medium and small city and even rural areas there are bottled water manufacturers.
While India ranks in the top 10 largest bottled water consumers in the world, its per capita per annum consumption of bottled water is estimated to be five litter which is comparatively lower than the global average of 24 litter. Today it is one of Indian’s fastest growing industrial sectors. Between 1999 and 2004, the Indian bottled water arrest grew at a compound annual growth rate (CARR) of 25 per cent – the highest in the world. The total annual bottled water consumption in India had tripled to 5 billion litter in 2004 from 1. 5 billion litter in 1999. Global consumption of bottled water was nearing 200 billion litter in 2006.
Bottled water top players in India The market leader is Visible International, which boasts a 35 per cent share. It is followed by Coca- Coca’s Kinney (around 25 per cent) and PepsiCo Aquifer (around 15 per cent). The top players in bottled water industry in India are the major international giants like Coca cola, Pepsi, Nestle and noticeable presence of national players like Mount Everest, Mechanical, Kingfisher, Moan Meaning, SKIN Breweries , Indian Railways so on. With increasing competition, this sector will register a robust growth in 2010, predict industry analysts. Includes, investment in capacity enhancement, packaging initiatives and below-the- line activities to pump up volumes in the over-crowded category. Meanwhile, Indian major Apparel Agro is extending the manufacturing facility for Bailey from 29 to 60 plants this year. While Indian major Visible International is beefing up its striation, manufacturing and marketing operations, Coca-Cola India is sharpening its focus on packaging initiatives of Kinney to woo new consumers. In essence, the packaged water industry in India will soon witness a major tussle between Indian and foreign players to gain market and mind share.
The western region accounts for 40 per cent of the market and the eastern region Just 10. However, the bottling plants are concentrated in the southern region – of the approximately 1,200 bottling water plants in India, 600 are in Tamil Nadia. But a major problem is southern India, especially Tamil Nadia, is water starved. Top multinational players such as Coca- Cola and PepsiCo have been trying for the past decade to capture the Indian bottled water market. Today they have captured a significant portion of it. However, Apparel Visible continues to hold 40 per cent of the market share.
Kinney and Aquifer are fast catching up, with Kinney holding 25 per cent of the market and Aquifer approximately 10 per cent. The rest, including the smaller players, have 20-25 % of the market share. History of Bottled water in India Mineral bottled water in India under the name ‘Visible’ was first introduced in Iambi by Visible Ltd. , a company of Italian origin in 1965. Mineral bottled water were in glass bottles in two varieties – bubbly and still in 1965 This company was started by Signor Feline who first brought the idea of selling bottled water in India.
Apparel bought over Visible (India) Ltd. In 1969 and started bottling Mineral water in glass bottles under the brand name ‘Visible’. Later Apparel switched over to PVC non- returnable bottles and finally advanced to PET containers. Since 1995 Mr.. Rammers J. Chuan has started expanding Visible operations substantially and the turnover has littered more than 20 times over a period of 10 years and the average growth rate has been around 40% over this period. Presently it has 8 plants and 11 franchisees all over India.
Visible commands a 60% market share of the organized market. Currently, Bailey has a national presence in 5 lake retail outlets across the country. “We plan to increase manufacturing plants for Bailey from 29 to 60, presently 40 plants are operational and few more will be ready for operations over the next few months,” informed Nadia Chuan, Joint managing director of Apparel Agro. Variety of packages Bottled water is sold in a variety of packages: pouches and glasses, 330 ml bottles, 500 ml bottles, one- liter bottles and even 20- to 50-liter bulk water packs.
The formal bottled water business in India can be divided broadly into three segments in terms of cost: premium natural mineral water, natural mineral water and packaged drinking water. Premium natural mineral water includes brands such as Avian, San Pipelining and Peppier, which are imported and priced between RSI. 80 and RSI. 110 a liter. Natural mineral water, with brands such as Himalayan and Catch, is priced around RSI. 30 a liter. Packaged drinking water, which is nothing but treated water, is the biggest segment and includes brands such as Apparel, Visible, Coca-Cola’s Kinney classifies some bottled water according to its origin.
Artesian well water: Water from a well that taps an aquifer–layers of porous rock, sand and earth that contain water–which is under pressure from surrounding upper layers of rock or clay. Mineral water: Water from an underground source that contains at least 250 parts per million total dissolved solids. Minerals and trace elements must come from the source of the underground water. They cannot be added later. Spring water: Derived from an underground formation from which water flows naturally to the earth’s surface. Spring water must be collected only at the spring or through a borehole tapping the underground formation feeding the spring.
If some external force is used to collect the water through a borehole, the water must have the same composition and quality as the water that naturally flows to the surface. Well water: Water from a hole bored or drilled into the ground, which taps into an aquifer. Tap Water: Some bottled water also comes from municipal sources–in other words–the tap. Municipal water is usually treated before it is bottled. Dab (coconut) water in bottles: Chief minister Mahatma Banshee’s focus on small investors will soon see packaged coconut water in local stores in 2013.
The state food processing department is currently studying a state-of-the-art technique for packaging bottles of dab water. It will collaborate with the Indian Institute of Packaging to sell coconut water and highlight that fact that one portion of coconut water is equivalent to three portions of water. Why Bottled water? Millions of people, both in rural and urban India, suffer from inadequate or no tap eater supply. Even some parts of Iambi, the country’s financial capital, get a mere two hours of daily water supply. The city’s Viral suburb gets 45 minutes.
Thus bottled water is much in demand by residents:- even though the businesses profiting from the sales are thriving from access to public water sources. Bottled water fills a void created by government failure to address basic services, Peter Click of the Pacific Institute writes in its World Water report. “In many parts of the world, tap water is not available or safe to drink, In these regions, the failure of governments to provide Asia water services has opened the door to private companies and vendors filling a critical need, albeit at a very high cost to consumers. The institute reasons that governments should tap into spending on commercial water by consumers to secure funds to provide safe water at fraction of the cost. Bottled water has been treated by distillation, reverse osmosis, or other suitable process and that meets the definition of “purified water”. The bottled water treatments include: Distillation: In this process, water is turned into a vapor. Since minerals are too heavy to vaporize, hey are left behind, and the vapors are condensed into water again. Reverse osmosis: Water is forced through membranes to remove minerals in the water.
Absolute 1 micron filtration: Water flows through filters that remove particles larger than one micron in size, such as “Circumscription”, a parasitic protozoan. Connation: Bottlers of all types of waters typically use ozone gas, an antimicrobial agent, to disinfect the water instead of chlorine, since chlorine can leave residual taste and dour to the water. Bottled Water: How Safe? The bottled water industry has spent billions over the past decade to sell you on the dead that bottled water is better than tap water.
Well the short answer is they are water bottling industry gets the water free, filters it, bottles it and sells it back to us at 1,900% profit. The ironic part is that tap water is legislated to be 7. 0 pH neutral. They first dump a TON of chlorine in the water to kill off all the bad bacteria, this makes it highly acidic. In India around 100 companies sell an estimated 424 million litter of bottled water valued at around RSI 200 core in the country annually. Most bottlers claim that their water is 100 per cent bacteria-free, safe, tastier and healthier.
But is the water in these bottles really safe to drink? Do they conform to international or national standards? To find out, the Mohammedan-based Consumer Education and Research Society (CERES), an independent non-profit institution with a sophisticated product-testing laboratory, recently carried out a detailed study on 13 major brands of bottled water available in the country. The national brands Visible (separate samples were taken from their units in Bangor, Gabbed, Calcutta and Abroad) and Bailey (Iambi and Sugar) were selected on the basis of their dominant position in the overall market.
Basil (Means), Golden Eagle (Achaean), Spas (Mohammedan), Narrating (Thane), Truth (Achaean) and Yes (Nadia) were included because of their regional popularity. To conform to international standards for such testing, 21 bottles of each brand were tested in the CERES laboratory against “analytical” and “sensory” parameters as well as for “microbiological” contamination. To ensure fairness, the results were sent to the individual companies for their comments. So how safe is bottled water? Not that safe, says the CERES survey as many as 10 of the 13 brands had foreign floating objects in clear violation of norms.
Again during a surprise inspection by the health committee chairman Unsheathe Reedy and team at two mineral water units in the Bangor on January 1 1, 2011, it was found that mineral water production unit owners were bottling borehole water. The units were also illegally using several branded labels on the bottles to market the water. The standing committee visited a mineral water production unit called AM Enterprises and found the owner selling water without an SIS mark from the Bureau of India Standards. He was found mixing mineral water with borehole water and selling it in cans to the public.
Water resources over-exploited The majority of the bottling plants are dependent on groundwater. They create huge water stress in the areas where they operate because groundwater is also the main source – in most places the only source – of drinking water in India. This has created huge conflict between the community and the bottling plants. Private companies in India can siphon out, exhaust and export groundwater free because the groundwater law in the country is archaic and not in tune with the realities of modern capitalist societies.
The existing law says that “the person who owns the land owns the groundwater beneath”. This means that, theoretically, a person can buy one square meter of land and take all the groundwater of the surrounding areas and the law of land cannot object to it. This law is the core of the conflict between the community and the companies as they are making the business of bottled water in the country highly lucrative. Take for instance the case of Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in drought- prone Kola Deer near Jasper.
Coca-Cola gets its water free except for a tiny sees (for discharging the wastewater) it pays to the State Pollution Control Board – a little over of water every day – at a cost of 14 passe per 1,000 litter. So, a RSI. 10 per liter Kinney water has a raw material cost of Just 0. 02-0. 03 passe. (It takes about two to three litter of groundwater to make one liter of bottled water. ) On April 7, more than 1,500 villagers defied a police cordon and marched to Coca-Cola’s bottling plant in Impending village, Varnish, in Attar Pradesh state, demanding that the company immediately shut down its bottling plant.
In January, the New Delhi-based Energy and Resources Institute (TIER) advised Coca-Cola to shut a bottling plant in the drought-stricken state of Restaurants. Indian’s Ministry of Water Resources has ranked 0% of ground water resources in Restaurants as “over- exploited” and nearly 34% resources as “dark/ critical”, the gravest ranking across the country Bottled water companies earn high profits What is amazing is that people are prepared to pay RSI. 12 for a liter of water-in India especially when the cost of material input (0. 5 paisa per liter excluding labor cost) pales into insignificance before the price of the product. Up to 40% of bottled water comes from the same source as tap water, but is sold back to consumers at hundreds of times the cost, says the website of the North American “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign. Not only the Coca-Cola but there are thousands of brands in Indian’s $445 million packaged water industry. Not Just bottlers are involved. In south India, thousands of fuel trucks converted to be water carriers sell ground water to households and establishments at about $10 for 5,000 litter.
More than 13,000 tankers carry water drawn from farmland surrounding Achaean, according a social activist R Carnivals. He estimates a $148 million tanker industry is cashing in on Sienna’s acute water scarcity. The story is replicated across India, including in New Delhi. Plastic Bottles Pollution Tap water is a local product that needs no packaging. Globally, bottled water accounts for as many as 1. 5 million tons of plastic waste annually, according to the Sierra Club. In addition, billions of bottles end up in the ground every year. Sadly, only 20% ever get recycled, according to the Container Recycling Institute.
The other 80%… Besides landfills, many bottles end up in oceans, posing a risk to marine life and and our Planet from Plastic pollution. By purchasing bottled water, you’re indirectly raising the price of gasoline and contributing to Global Warming and climate change. In 2007, the manufacturers of plastic water bottles generated more Han 2. 5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions and required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, according to the Pacific Institute. Americans drank more than 30 billion single-serving bottles of water last year.
Yet the vast majority of us have an unlimited source of clean, EPA-regulated tap water flowing from our faucets. The anti-bottling protests The anti-bottling protests in India against Pepsi and Coca-Cola echo increased concern in Europe and the United States over the proliferation of bottled water, including the creation of billions of soon unwanted plastic containers. In India, retests against the bottling plant in drought-prone Kola Deer near Jasper focus on the source of the packaged water and how bottling companies are grabbing underground water.
The truth is, many water companies get their water from sources in developing countries, such as India and Fiji. In those places, the themselves, forcing the villagers to pay for water that they used to be able to use as a community, free of charge. On February 25, 2011 the Indian state of Kraal has passed a bill allowing compensation claims against soft drink giant Coca-Cola over alleged environmental damage caused by a bottling plant. The legislation adopted by the state assembly on Thursday creates a tribunal empowered to process claims for alleged losses resulting from violations of environmental regulations.
The Planked bottling factory in Kraal was closed in 2005 after protests from activists and residents. A high-level state panel concluded last year that the plant had caused environmental and soil degradation as well as water contamination, and recommended a fine of 47 million dollars. Coca-Cola denied all the allegations. Reports on April 18, 2013 that Coca-Cola plans to use surface water from Yamaha for TTS upcoming bottling plant near Durance have raised concern about power production from Hyde projects on the river. If water is taken by Coke from Yamaha at Vicarages, it will surely affect the power production of our five major Hyde projects,” said G P Patella, managing director of the state-run JIVE Ltd, which produces 475 MM. New development in bottled water industry June 24, 2013: Visible to venture into flavored water category June 23, 2013: Tamil Nadia Chief Minister J Salability announced that state transport corporations will set up mineral water plants and sell bottled water at Errs per liter.
May 15, 2013: Health Minister writes to food regulator on bottled water safety April 5, 2013: Visible launches digital campaign for 500 ml bottle March 30, 2013: Illegal bottled water units booming in Oneida: At least 34 packaged drinking water units have been instructed by court to shut down their units for “exploiting” underground water and operating without permission of any of the competent authorities.
