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Global Soft Drink Container

Global demand for packaged carbonated soft drinks is forecast to expand 4.7 percent per annum through 2001 to 170 billion liters, a modest acceleration from the past decade's average pace. Advances for soft drink containers will trail, reflecting a shifting product mix in favor of larger, multiserving containers like the two-liter polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle. Container demand is projected to advance 3.4 percent annually to 324 billion units in 2001, with plastic bottles and (to a lesser extent) metal cans enjoying the most favorable prospects. These and other trends are presented in World Soft Drink Containers, a new study from The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industrial market research firm. Sales of soft drinks and containers will rise sharply in many developing nations, while sales in the developed world will be restrained by market maturity and competition from alternative beverages like bottled water. Among the larger markets, the strongest gains will come from China and Brazil, propelled by expanding populations, rising disposable incomes, improvements in distribution systems, and rising popularity among younger consumers. Over the longer term, highly populated and virtually unpenetrated Southern Asian markets like India and Indonesia are expected to emerge as major engines of global demand growth. Glass bottles will remain the leading form of soft drink packaging in unit terms through 2001, with demand expected to post a modest recovery from the declines of the past decade when glass was largely replaced by aluminum and PET in countries ranging from the US to Argentina. But while glass will benefit from rising soft drink demand in developing markets like China where it remains prevalent, loss of market share to lighter weight and shatter resistant packaging materials will continue to limit growth opportunities in virtually every nation. Plastic bottles will enjoy the fastest growth of any soft drink container type, with sales rising ten percent per annum. While plastics have already supplanted multiserving glass bottles in much of the developed world, the penetration of containers ranging in size from 25to0milliliters will allow them to capture a greater share of the single-serving market from glass and metal containers, fueling unit gains. Metal cans will gain further share at the expense of glass, although advances will be limited by stiff competition from single-serving PET bottles in the US, which accounts for over half of global can demand. In other regions, cans will benefit from their light weight, resistance to breakage, long shelf lives, excellent graphics and favorable image among consumers in the developing world. Aluminum is the most widely used soft drink can metal, and is employed almost exclusively in can packaging except in Western Europe, South Africa and Japan, where tinplate steel remains competitive. WORLD SOFT DRINK CONTAINERS (published 1/98, 281 pages) is available for $3800 from The Freedonia Group, Inc., 767 Beta Drive, Cleveland, Ohio . For further details, please contact Corinne Gangloff by phone , fax or e-mail at . Full text is also available online through commercial database companies and the www.freedoniagroup.com Web site. If information in this release is used for an article, please attribute information from this news release to The Freedonia Group, Inc. (Cleveland, OH) and include, if possible, the price of the report. We would also appreciate (at your convenience) a copy of the article or publication in which we appear.