Water

The bottled water market is sub-segmented into still water, carbonated water, flavored water, and functional water. Still water is the largest sub-segment of bottled water, accounting for more than 65% of the demand, followed by carbonated water. Product innovation in terms of flavors and packaging has triggered the flavored water demand.

The bottled water market is fragmented due to the presence of a large number of private label brands and local bottlers. More than 60% of the global market is covered by regional and national level players.

The growth of the PET bottles sector has also helped in the widespread supply of bottled water. Plastic is an amazingly convenient material - cheap, light, flexible, and durable. Used for bottles, it is in our homes, schools and workplaces but its growing and systematic usage has come at a heavy environmental price, now on the agenda of all countries from Western Europe to India.

Companies like SodaStream promoting the use of home carbonation systems reduces bottles and cans packaging waste, and the pollution caused by the transport of bottled drinks. According to an analysis by Carbon Trust, SodaStream is 75% less greenhouse gas-intensive than generic water sold in plastic (PET) bottles in the UK.

Consumers will have to switch to filtered tap water and other means to drink water without the systematic use of bottles and increase the recycling. New technologies are going to make in-roads into an established market.

Shrink sleeves for labelling of water are just one of the product applications handled by the machine like the EXPERT M3 . These machines with full servo technology and digital automation makes the production easy and flexible. Thanks to their superior register accuracy and sensitive web tension control system, the VISION CI, EXPERT CI and MASTER CI flexo presses are capable of handling even the thinnest materials for the production of shrink sleeves and wrap-arounds. In gravure, the web handling capabilities of the EXPERT RS 6003 and VISION RS 5003 deliver excellent quality printing even with shrink sleeves using thin and stretchable substrates with the best TCO.

Packaging of water continues to grow. The BOBST DRO family has been designed to accommodated the most complicated jobs such as shelf ready display boxes. The range of machines enables complex designs combined with high graphics quality. The BOBST DRO 1624/28/32 NT RS is the most productive press on the market place. The BOBST FFG 924 or 1228 are the most productive machines delivering up to 33.000 boxes per hour. For brand owners requiring very high quality graphics incl. images, the BOBST THQ FlexoCloud Technology is the most advanced one pass platform delivering quality, productivity at low operating costs. In addition, BOBST offers security printing features for anti-counterfeit and track & trace - features required by brands. For brown boxes in very high productivity, the BOBST FFG 8.20 EXPERT is the industry benchmark in terms of speed and fast order change for a fully automated complete line.

In case beverages are packed in a tray type table top display a laminated board solution is required. The MASTERFLUTE TOUCH In-line laminating solutions of BOBST provide highly efficient production lines for litho laminated corrugated board.