While traditional and perhaps obvious fruit flavours remain popular, recent years have seen the introduction of herbs, spices and botanicals, with the aroma often being as important as the taste. This all sits well with the trend to more natural products.
Fruit flavours are generally naturally sweet to the palate, and there has been a long-standing tendency to sweeten most beverages, which has often meant adding calorific content to water, which by definition is the best zero-calorie beverage available! To the rescue has come a new range of sweetener options such as stevia, but there also seems to be a trend to truly natural and less sweet offerings.
Zenith International senior consultant Martyna Zimakiewicz gave a presentation on flavoured and functional water market trends at the 7th Global Bottled Water Congress in Gleneagles, Scotland, in November …
The presentation used four definitions:
Some waters feature so many ingredients that they seem to fall more into the soft drinks category, and others add simple flavours and even aromas in very subtle ways. Martyna showed a range of recent product launches and asked, Plain but functional? Flavoured water or fruit drink? Flavoured water or CDS? Functional water or sports drink?
There is no doubt that categories are blurring, presenting a bewildering choice for consumers and a challenge for retailers.
While bottled water commanded 40% ‘share of throat’ of the entire soft drinks arena in 2009, Water Plus accounted for just 2% – niche, but one that’s growing steadily. Water Plus accounted for just 4.3% of 109bn litres of global bottled water volume in 2004, but had grown to 6% of 151bn litres by 2009. In terms of value, 9.2% of $73bn in 2004 had grown to 13.2% of $106bn in 2009.
The world’s leading Water Plus market is the US, with flavoured/functional outselling flavoured. A similar, but lower volume story can also be found in Japan and China. In some markets such as Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, Mexico and the UK, the flavoured/functional segment is tiny when compared to flavoured water.
It comes as no surprise that the ‘big four’ lead the way, with Danone in front and Nestlé Waters in fourth place with its predominantly plain water portfolio.
As consumers learn more about the natural antioxidant benefits of fruits and flowers, perhaps more of tomorrow’s flavoured waters will gain functional status.
Bill Bruce is group editorial director of FoodBev Media. You can contact him here
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