Americans continue to build a bottled water love story

It's a PET packaging story that's been decades in the making and continued in 2024.

Bottled water — where the 16.9-ounce plastic half liter bottle is by far the most popular container — saw a 2.3-percent jump in U.S. consumption in 2024, according to new, preliminary statistics release by research and adviser firm Beverage Marketing Corp. at The Packaging Conference in Doral, near Miami.

But carbonated soft drinks (CSDs), which also commonly use PET bottles, continued a slide in 2024, said Gary Hemphill, managing director of research for BMC, a research and consulting firm focused on beverages.

Bottled water's 2.3 percent increase in 2024 followed a 0.4 percent jump in 2023.

"If you look at that refreshment beverage universe, what you'll see is that bottled water and energy drinks grew, which probably is no big deal in the scheme of things in a typical year. But they were the only two of the mainstream refreshment beverage categories that actually grew last year," Hemphill said. "And that's actually been true for the last two years."

Jim Johnson

Gary Hemphill at The Packagung Conference.

Refreshment beverages, through BMC's definition, includes a variety of products, including fruit and sports drinks as well as ready-to-drink coffee and tea. Other categories include alcohol, tap water and traditional beverages including milk, hot coffee and tea.

Bottled water held a 24.5 percent overall market share in 2024, up from 24.2 percent in 2024 and 22.5 percent five years ago in 2019. This compares with a 17.6 percent share for CSDs last year, 17.9 percent in 2023 and 18.9 percent in 2019, according to Hemphill. Details from his presentation come from BMC's Drinktell database, which the company sells to the market.

Carbonated soft drinks have seen volume declines in 18 of the past 20 years, coinciding with the massive growth in popularity for bottled water. Volumes for CSDs only increased in 2021 and 2022, stopping a 16-year streak of declines. The category has seen a return to decreases during the past two years, including a 1-percent drop last year and 1.9 percent in 2023. CSDs are packaged in both PET bottles and aluminum cans.

Hemphill expects the trend of CSD declines to continue into the future. "It's a massive category. We don't see it dropping off the cliff, but we see modest declines going ahead into the future," he said.

Bottled water volume "accelerated modestly" last year as slowing price growth helped boost the category, which exceeded 16 billion gallons for the first time in the United States last year, Hemphill said.

Last year's 2.3 percent increase for all bottled water compares favorably from more modest increases in both 2023 and 2022 but still lags behind the growth numbers between 2018 and 2021 which were at least 3.7 percent each of those years.

Single-use PET bottled water accounted for 70.7 percent of the bottled water market in 2024, off slightly from 71.1 percent in 2023 but up from 69.5 percent in 2018, BMC reported.

Plastic represented 44.6 percent of the overall beverage packaging market in 2024, down from 45.3 percent in 2023 and 45.4 percent in 2018. Metal cans, meanwhile, increased to 40.5 percent in 2024, from 38.9 percent in 2023 and 34.7 percent in 2018.

A factor in plastic's decrease in the overall market share for beverage packaging from 2023 to 2024 involves an increasing trend toward using aluminum cans for some products, including sparkling waters, Hemphill explained. CSD makers are also doing more with the use of cans these days than previously.

Glass stood at 9.5 percent in 2024, 10.4 percent in 2023 and 13.3 percent in 2018. Paper was 3.9 percent in both 2024 and 2023 and 4.8 percent in 2018, BMC reported.

As for 2025, Hemphill predicts bottled water will see a volume increase of 1.5 to 2.5 percent with CSDs staying flat to falling by 1 percent.

As far as wholesale pricing goes, CSDs are expected to offset softness by increasing prices by 1.5 to 2.5 percent. Bottled water is expected to see wholesale dollar growth of 3 to 4 percent this year, Hemphill said.

Hemphill also said consumer feelings about the economy, as a whole, are actually now improving after taking a hit in the past couple of years. He said a continued upward trajectory in sentiment will help consumer spending in general and beverage buying in particular.

When times get tough for people, there is a segment of the population that will tend to rely more on low-cost tap water as families have to be more careful about how they spend their money.

"That's important because consumers are feeling better about things. They're more likely to buy things this year. Everything, but specifically, we're talking about beverages," he told the conference crowd.

"So it improves beverage performance," he said. "The last three years have been difficult from a volume perspective," he said.

* Source : https://www.plasticsnews.com/news/bottled-water-sales-rise-us