IBWA: Bottled water will be U.S. America’s largest beverage category
The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA), in conjunction with Beverage Marketing Corporation (BMC), has released 2015 bottled water statistics, which show that U.S. Americans’ consumption of bottled water increased by 7.9% and bottled water sales are up 8.9% since the previous year.
BMC now indicates that bottled water is poised to overtake carbonated soft drinks as America’s largest beverage category by volume by 2017, if not by the end of 2016.
According to Michael Bellas, BMC chairman and CEO, Americans increased their annual consumption by more than 11 gallons, from 25.4 gallons per person in 2005 to 36.5 gallons a decade later. During the same period, per capita consumption of carbonated soft drinks dropped by 12.4 gallons. Per capita consumption of other major beverage categories, like milk and fruit beverages, also fell.
Reflecting a clear trend of consumers increasingly choosing healthy, convenient, zero-calorie bottled water, BMC reported that by 2015, bottled water had achieved a new volume record – almost 3 billion gallons higher than it had been in 2007. Soft drinks, on the other hand, underwent their eleventh consecutive year of volume reductions in 2015.
Bottled water sales increased by 8.9% in 2015, and now total $14.2 billion (wholesale). In 2015, total U.S. bottled water consumption grew by 7.9% to 11.7 billion gallons, up from 10.87 billion gallons in 2014. In addition, per-capita consumption is up 7.1% in 2015, with every person in America drinking an average of 36.5 gallons of bottled water last year.
