PETpla.net Insider 01+02 / 2012

REGIONAL MARKET REPORTS 15 PET planet insider Vol. 13 No. 01+02/12 www.petpla.net holiday paradise and this has naturally led to increased demand for packaged drinks during the tourist season. This demand is being predominantly met by Serbian bottling plants making use of their own natural springs. As well as Montenegro, the other former Yugoslavian states are also an export target for Serbian producers. As far as preforms are concerned, larger operations such as Coca Cola or Minaqua produce a major part of their preforms in-house. However, the market is big enough to accommodate regional preform producers, and there is a growing export market for preforms in the former Yugosla- vian states. The bottled water market in Serbia Bottled water posted a sales growth by value of 3% in 2010, totalling RSD 24 billion. Serbian bottled water is expected to achieve RSD 31 billion by 2015 As happened in all soft drinks categories, Serbian bot- tled water faced difficult times due to the economic crisis in 2009 and 2010. Whilst in 2009 the decrease in volume was 2%, in 2010 it fell by a mere 1%. The biggest category in Serbian bottled water is carbonated bottled water, account- ing for 61% of sales by value of the whole sector and 72% of volume sales, which means that trends in carbonated bottled water clearly drive trends in the whole bottled water sector. Compared to the review period, 2009 and 2010 were poorer in terms of volume and value sales and, more significantly perhaps, in terms of marketing activities and number of new product launches. This is because the eco- nomic crisis forced Serbian consumers to reduce spending on bottled water as their household budgets were signifi- cantly squeezed. The key off-trade trends followed key trends in the category as a whole. These included a decrease in volume sales, a reduction in marketing activities, fewer new prod- uct launches and a decrease, in inflation-adjusted terms, of the unit price. Significantly, on-trade recorded a slightly faster decline of volume sales and constant unit price than the off-trade segment. With lower disposable incomes, Ser- bian consumers were clearly cutting back on discretionary expenditure, especially in 2009 and 2010. The leader in Serbian bottled water for decades has been Knjaz Miloš ad – a domestic producer of carbonated bottled water. In 2010, Knjaz Miloš ad held a 31% off-trade volume share of Serbian bottled water. The local bottled water industry fared better in the Serbian market in 2010, because there is a long tradition of bottling water that is available from natural springs nation-wide. This enables local producers to remain competitive, whilst foreign com- panies find it difficult to compete against them. In 2010 private label products were especially notable. One company, Premia, is found on the shelves of the coun- try’s biggest retailer - Delta Holding doo. Premia bottled water is currently produced in 1.5l and 6l bottles and it has Serbia Coming from Bulgaria, I was very lucky with the Serbian transport network. The roads were excellent and there were no traffic jams. How- ever, dense fog made the journey to Belgrade with the Editourmobil seem never-ending, and it was impossible to do much more than 50km / h. A combination of the fog and longer than expected visits to companies meant that my time- table went well and truly awry but thanks to different time zones and changes to daylight saving time everything just fell into place. It was fortunate I was not aware beforehand of all the time changes! So I managed to be reasonably on time for my appointments with Knjaz Milos and later with Borverk Eurotrade. I also discovered, luckily just in time, that appointments which I thought would be in the centre of Belgrade, were actu- ally only head offices and that the production facilities were located out of town. On the way to Fruvita in the early morning of the following day I thought I would have an hour or so to spare before the factory opened. This turned out to be not the case, because my contact Mr Ivan Petrovic was ready and waiting for me at the factory gate, eager to show me the Krones aseptic line. No time for a lunch break today, instead of which I made my way to the other end of town for an appointment with Coca Cola. Finally there was a last visit later to the PET preform manufac- turer Energopet. My eventful time in Serbia had come to an end, there was yet another meeting in my sched- ule, to the bottled water producer Minaqua in Novi Sad..And in the evening while I was sitting in the Editourmobil writing up my blog, my mind was already eagerly anticipating my upcoming visits to new countries.