The decline continued since the start of the year, so that the latest report by Coca-Cola HBC shows the non-alcoholic drink market contracted by 5% in the second quarter against the same period of last year.
The hardest hit soft drinks category last year was ice-tea, which declined by 16%. The ice-tea&coffee market is put at over 70 million liters.
Soft drinks consumption continued the downward trend it’s followed in recent years, so that, from consumption per capita of around 150 liters in 2008, Romanians came to consume on average around 135 liters last year, 10% less, according to ZF calculations based on Canadean data.
The largest players on the soft drinks market are Coca-Cola HBC Romania, Romaqua Group Borsec, Quadrant Amroq Beverage (the local bottler of PepsiCo) and Tymbark Maspex. They are battling with the category of private labels, which have started putting pressure on the market owing to the lower prices.
Private label consumption on the soft drinks segment neared 20 liters per capita, namely 15% of total consumption of such products, eight times higher than the 2008 level.
One of the categories with the lowest growth rates was bottled water, which slipped by 2.55%, according to Canadean data.
2014 has not been a good year for Romania’s soft drinks industry. The best indicator in this sense was the trend of sales registered by the largest player on the market, Coca-Cola HBC Romania. The bottler’s sales dropped by as much as 10% in volume in the first half of this year, taking further the negative trend of last year.
(English version by Catalina Apostoiu)