soft drinks | Page 9

cork eventually became popular,
especially for small single serve and beer bottles. Screw stoppers retained their
popularity for the larger bottles where re-sealability was important.
Except for some speciality earthenware ginger beer containers, glass bottles
were the only form of packaging for carbonates for over hundred years until the
introduction of cans in the 1960s. Then, just as the second half of the nineteenth
century had been ‘boom-time’ for product development, the second half of the
twentieth century became ‘boom-time’ for packaging and distribution development.

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10CARBONATED SOFT DRINKS
1.4 Recent technological development
Technology certainly played a large part in the growth of soft drinks in the sec-
ond half of the twentieth century. The development of cans, plastic bottles, high
speed packaging lines and improvements to distribution systems have been largely
responsible for the increase in availability, the decrease in real-term cost and the
resultant increase in consumption.
The advent of railways and large steam ships in the 1800s made transportation
feasible and indeed drinks were exported from the UK to the USA as early as 1800.
The export trade continued to expand and by the mid-1800s signicant trade was
being done with the far corners of the Empire. This must have involved considerable
cost and on a domestic basis the trade was on a much more local scale. The industry
evolved as a multitude of local businesses operating in a small geographical area,
though some larger companies operated several production plants in different parts
of the country. The UKBottler’s Year Book 1933listed more than 2000 soft drink
manufacturing companies but by 1983 the list had shrunk to less than 400, and
the number is now down to less than 100. Likewise the number of bottling plants
in the USA grew to reach a peak of 7920 in 1929, remaining fairly constant until
around 1950 and then halved to 3727 by 1965 as improved productivity and dis-
tribution started to have a signicant effect. This halving of the number of bottling
plants took place over a period in which per capita consumption rose by over 60%.
More recently, the growth of cans and PET bottles at the expense of returnable
glass has played a signicant part in this continuing productivity improvement,
which has been truly amazing. As recently as 20 years ago a typical returnable
glass bottle line producing, say 300 bottles/min, required about 25 operating per-
sonnel. Highly automated high speed production lines now ll up to 2000 cans/min
using three operators. Likewise, integrated PET bottle blowing and lling oper-
ations have also improved production efciencies signicantly. Other factors
contributing to improved operational/distribution efciencies (both in time and cost)
include:
•use of shrink wrap in place of crates or boxes
•micro-processor controlled equipment, for example, for palletisation
•automated syrup room operations
•centralised computer-controlled warehousing systems
•automated bar-coding and traceability systems.
1.5 The growth of carbonates – consumption
The growth of carbonates worldwide has been a remarkable phenomenon, not only
in the USA and western Europe, but also in Mexico, Brazil, eastern Europe, China
and India. In the USA especially, carbonates have dominated the soft drinks market
and the carbonates market has been dominated by cola. This worldwide growth in
carbonates can be attributed in large part to the two major American cola companies

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INTRODUCTION11
and their aggressive international sales and marketing campaigns. In the UK, Europe
and Japan, cola accounts for almost half of the total carbonated soft drinks market
and in the USA almost 70%. The scale of carbonates consumption globally is
truly impressive, amounting to a total of almost 193,000 million litres in 2004. The
Americas (North and South) accounted for more than half of the total (see Table 1.3)
but there is little doubt that at their present rates of growth China and India will
soon start to make an impact on the global scene. However, in the USA and UK it is
clear that carbonates’ dominance of the soft drinks market has peaked and begun to
wane in the past few years, although exact numbers reported vary because of slight
differences in denitions and methodologies between the research companies. In
the UK, carbonates volume reached more than half of the total soft drinks market,
peaking at around 52% in the mid-1990s. Although the volume of carbonates had
been continuing to grow year on year, still drinks have recently been growing more
strongly, increasing their market share because of their perceived ‘more healthy’
image. Carbonate volumes increased from 2.18 billion litres in 1982 to 4.27 billion
litres in 1992 and 6.5 billion litres in 2003 (see Table 1.4), however this inexorable
climb in volume appears to have stopped. ACNielsen have reported that in 2004
sales value of carbonates fell by 3.3% (4.7% lower by volume) when compared
with the previous year. Whilst some of the recent fall in sales can undoubtedly be
Table 1.3Global consumption of carbonates.
Region Volume (million litres) Percentage
North America 63,655 33
Latin America 42,437 22
West Europe 30,863 16
Asia/Australia 28,934 15
Africa 9,645 5
East Europe 9,645 5
Middle East 7,716 4
Total 192,895
Source: Zenith International.
Table 1.4Growth of UK carbonates.
Year Total carbonates
(million litres)
1980 2095
1985 2735
1990 4129
1995 5380
2000 5950
2003