Bottled water industry in Australia (Essay Sample)

Bottled Water Industry in Australia
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Bottled Water Industry in Australia
Bottled water industry in Australia has continued to grow phenomenally over the years. The market in Australia can be said to be a spring water market where Australia shows an obvious bias for products with consistent quality. There are many categories of bottled water in the country. They include near waters, rain water, filtered municipal waters and mineralised water. Mineral water is usually carbonated. The infrastructure is strong at the retailer stage. Through there are over 800 manufacturers of bottled water, the industry is dominated by two multinationals; Coca-Cola and Pepsi. The retailers which include supermarkets are the main distribution channels within the supply chain (Gentile, 2011). There are more than 80,000 retail supermarkets that help in the distribution of bottled water. Their scale of operation ranges from large to small, though large scale operators account for a large volume of sales. The method of operation is strictly cash. The chain stores handle volumes of more than 120,000 tonnes of bottled water every day accounting for more than 60 percent of daily volumes. In this market, there are no middle men. The manufacturers sell directly to the chain stores and smaller supermarkets. The manufacturers have effectively penetrated the urban market but the non urban market remains largely unexploited. More than 65 percent of the non urban markets have not been penetrated. This means that there is a large room for growth of the Australian bottled water market. The manufacturers have been keeping up with the technological changes and are using state of the art technology to improve their production volumes and the quality of water produced. Customer quality demands have also forced them to adopt better technologies in order to give premium products. In summary, the Australian bottled water market is dominated by two multin...