Jakarta. The non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages industry is still heavily reliant on the bottled water sector from a sales volume standpoint, making the business still quite far from sustainable, according to the industry association.

Triyono Prijosoesilo, the chairman of the Soft Drink Industry Association (Asrim), told reporters on Wednesday that the industry’s sales volume over the past few years mostly came from non-gallon packaged water. 

Data shown during Triyono’s presentation revealed that the sales volume of the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages industry had mostly remained stagnant at around 8 billion liters in 2015-2022. However, the sales volume significantly dropped to 6.7 billion liters in 2020 and slightly went up to around 7 billion liters. Sales volume then topped the 8 billion liters mark in 2022, although about 5 billion liters came from the non-gallon, packaged water. Followed by ready-to-drink tea beverages at 1.4 billion liters.

For comparison, the industry only sold around 228 million liters of juice drinks in 2022. Non-gallon, packaged water was also the only sub-category to witness significant growth that year. Its sales volume used to be stuck at around 4 billion liters, but then jumped to 5 billion liters in 2022.

“The non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages industry witnessed a 0 percent compound annual growth rate [in 2020-2022]. So the industry did not see any growth over the said period. Around 60 percent of the entire sales volume comes from packaged, mineral water,” Triyono said at a press briefing in Jakarta.

Triyono claimed that the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverage industry grew at around 3.1 percent in 2022-2023.

He added: “But if we take mineral water out, the industry’s growth can be at -2.6 percent. This means that the industry is still not sustainable. The industry’s structure is not strong yet because we rely on one sector alone to grow."