Bottled water ... private label, packaging and company aspects

Different materials are used for the packaging of bottled water: glass; plastic (PVC and PET) and aluminium or steel cans. These packaging have different shapes, colours and capacities.They are an essential part of the bottled water marketing.

In some cases, it is even possible to recognise the brand of the bottled water only thanks to the shape and colour of its packaging (e.g.: Perrier).

The bottled water industry is very dynamic: numerous bottled water companies compete on this market.

Although they can be extremely different, it is possible to identify three major categories of bottled water companies: Smaller or larger firms that were created to run and market one specific brand of bottled water. Some of them are century-old and family-owned, but most of them have now grouped or are under control of major multinational food companies, in particular Nestl and Danone.

The first bottle of Evian appeared on the market in 1830. At the time, the water was sold in earthenware jugs. Evian received its first ministerial approval as a natural mineral water in 1878. In 1892, the city of Evian leased the company the water springs and the casino until 2027 (Evian, 2000). Evian is now world number 1 for natural mineral still water, with 6 million litres produced daily12, 1441 million litres sold in 1999 to 130 countries. The company has subsidiaries in Belgium, UK, Germany, Switzerland,

USA and Canada. Evian was employing 1632 people by the end of 1999, including 900 at the bottling factory. The company had a turnover of US$ 500 million in 1999 (Danone, 2000).

Sodas or soft drinks companies now turn to the very promising bottled water market. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, for example, take advantage of their large world-wide network of bottlers to sell purified water.

Companies providing tap water, with extensive know-how in water purification now turn to a more lucrative distribution of water. Suez-Lyonnaise des Eaux and Vivendi, for instance, develop water services, such as home and office delivery of carboy water.

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packaging and bottled water private label companies