Beverages: soft drinks, water, beer, wine and spirits

Lesson 3 of 3 Math checked Facts checked against sources on 1 October 2026 12 min

Drinks players, trends 2024 to 2026, and how to crack the cases

Who the big drinks companies are by region, why people drank less alcohol and paid more sugar tax from 2024 to 2026, typical prompts, traps and drills.

Industry brief, with a one-minute summary: Beverages

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Key takeaways

Drinks cases usually ask why volume or profit fell, how to respond to a cheaper rival or a new tax, whether to enter a market, or how to grow a premium brand.
Common traps: Mixing up the brand owner and the bottler, which earn very different margins on very different revenues.
People drink less alcohol: global alcohol volumes fell about 2 percent in 2025, the third yearly fall in a row, according to IWSR.
No-alcohol grows: IWSR estimated in January 2026 that no-alcohol drinks that copy beer, wine and spirits grew about 9 percent in volume in 2025.

Key idea

Drinks cases usually ask why volume or profit fell, how to respond to a cheaper rival or a new tax, whether to enter a market, or how to grow a premium brand. Start with the category (soft drinks, water, beer, spirits) and the company's place in the chain (brand owner, bottler, brewer), then split growth into volume and price and mix.

Operating margin of four drinks companies, latest full year (percent)(%)

So-what

Brand owners that sell concentrate or premium spirits earn far higher margins than a brewer that brews, packs and delivers its own heavy product.

Examples of drinks players by region (examples only, not a ranking)

Examples of drinks players by region (examples only, not a ranking)
Region	Soft drinks and water	Beer, wine and spirits
Europe	Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and Coca-Cola HBC (bottlers), Danone and Nestle waters	Heineken (Netherlands), Carlsberg (Denmark, now with Britvic), Diageo (UK), Pernod Ricard and Remy Cointreau (France), Campari (Italy)
United States	The Coca-Cola Company, PepsiCo, Keurig Dr Pepper, Monster, Celsius	Constellation Brands, Molson Coors, Brown-Forman; AB InBev (Belgium) owns Budweiser
Middle East	Almarai (Saudi Arabia, juices and dairy drinks), Agthia (UAE, Al Ain water), Aujan Coca-Cola Beverages Company (Rani juices)	Alcohol is banned or tightly limited in much of the region
India	Varun Beverages (PepsiCo bottler), Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, Reliance Consumer Products (Campa Cola), Bisleri (water)	United Spirits (Diageo), Radico Khaitan, United Breweries (Heineken)
Southeast Asia	Fraser and Neave (Singapore and Malaysia), local bottlers	Thai Beverage and Boon Rawd (Thailand), San Miguel (Philippines)
China and Japan	Nongfu Spring (China, water); Suntory (Japan)	China Resources Beer, Tsingtao, Kweichow Moutai (baijiu); Asahi and Kirin (Japan)

So-what

Global brand owners often work through local bottlers and partners, so a case may be about the brand owner, the bottler or the relationship between them.

Trends 2024 to 2026 (checked 1 October 2026)

People drink less alcohol: global alcohol volumes fell about 2 percent in 2025, the third yearly fall in a row, according to IWSR. In the United States, Gallup found only 54 percent of adults drank in 2025, the lowest in nearly 90 years of polling. Big brewers lost volume (AB InBev down 2.3 percent, Heineken down 1.2 percent in 2025), and Heineken announced 5,000 to 6,000 job cuts over two years.
Spirits slowed after a boom: Diageo's organic net sales fell 2 percent in the year to June 2026, with weakness in North America and Asia Pacific, and Pernod Ricard's fell 3.9 percent, with sales down about 14 percent in the United States and 19 percent in China.
No-alcohol grows: IWSR estimated in January 2026 that no-alcohol drinks that copy beer, wine and spirits grew about 9 percent in volume in 2025.
Growth through price and mix in soft drinks: The Coca-Cola Company's net revenue rose 2 percent to USD 47.9 billion in 2025, with unit case volume flat and price and mix adding about 4 percentage points to organic growth. Varun Beverages, PepsiCo's big bottler in India and parts of Africa, grew total volume 7.9 percent to about 1,213 million cases in 2025, even though very heavy rain held back sales in India for parts of the year.
Bottlers change hands: Coca-Cola keeps selling its own bottlers to partners. The Jubilant Bhartia group bought 40 percent of the holding company of Coca-Cola's main Indian bottler in July 2025, and Coca-Cola HBC agreed in October 2025 to buy 75 percent of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa for USD 2.6 billion, with completion targeted by the end of 2026. Keurig Dr Pepper completed its purchase of the coffee company JDE Peet's in April 2026 and plans to split into a drinks company and a coffee company.
Price wars at the bottom: in India, Reliance relaunched Campa Cola in 2023 at INR 10 for 200 ml, and Coca-Cola was reported to have cut its cheapest 200 ml bottle from INR 15 to INR 10 in some states.
Sugar and health taxes: India's tax reform of 22 September 2025 put sweetened and flavoured drinks, including colas, in a new 40 percent goods and services tax rate. For colas this replaced 28 percent tax plus a 12 percent extra levy (cess), so the total stayed about the same, while some other non-alcoholic drinks rose from 18 percent to 40 percent. Saudi Arabia replaced its flat 50 percent excise on sweetened drinks with a per-litre tax that rises with sugar content from 1 January 2026. The WHO launched "3 by 35" in July 2025, urging countries to raise the real prices of tobacco, alcohol and sugary drinks by at least 50 percent by 2035 through taxes.
Trade fights over spirits: China put anti-dumping duties of 27.7 to 34.9 percent on EU brandy from 5 July 2025, sparing exporters that agreed minimum prices. EU wine and spirits faced a 15 percent US tariff under the August 2025 deal, but the US Supreme Court struck down the emergency tariffs behind it on 20 February 2026 and the United States has since applied other, changing tariffs, so check the current rate. The India and UK trade agreement, in force since 15 July 2026, cuts India's 150 percent tariff on Scotch whisky to 75 percent at once and to 40 percent over ten years.
A cyberattack hits a brewer: a cyberattack on Asahi on 29 September 2025 disrupted its systems in Japan, including accounting; its 2025 results, planned for February, came out only on 8 July 2026, with core operating profit down 7.8 percent.

Regulation basics

Excise taxes: charged per litre, per unit of alcohol or per gram of sugar. They can be a large share of the shelf price, especially for spirits, and governments change them often.
Alcohol rules: who may sell, where and when; minimum ages; limits on advertising; in most US states a required split between producer, wholesaler and retailer. Much of the Gulf bans or tightly limits alcohol.
Health rules: sugar taxes, warning labels, limits on marketing to children, and school bans on sugary drinks.
Trade: tariffs and anti-dumping duties hit spirits and wine, which travel across borders; beer and soft drinks are mostly made locally.
Packaging rules: deposit return schemes and recycled-content targets for bottles and cans (see the paper and packaging module).
Bottler territories: soft drinks brand owners grant bottlers the right to sell in a defined area, and competition authorities watch these agreements.

Typical case prompts and how to crack them

Drinks case prompts, the structure that comes from the goal, and the first driver to check

Drinks case prompts, the structure that comes from the goal, and the first driver to check
Prompt	Structure from the goal	First driver to check
Profits of a soft drinks bottler in Egypt fell	Volume x price and mix, minus sugar, packaging, distribution and other costs; currency	Input costs in local currency (sugar, PET, aluminium) against the price increases taken
A European brewer's volume keeps falling	Market volume x our share; mix of premium, mainstream and no-alcohol; on-trade against off-trade	Whether the market or our share is falling, and how fast no-alcohol and premium grow
How should a cola brand respond to a cheaper rival in India?	Volume by pack and price point, cost per case, route to market, the rival's reach	Which packs and channels the rival is winning, and our cost to serve a small pack
A sugar tax is coming. Should we reformulate?	Tax per litre by sugar tier x volume, against reformulation cost and the risk of losing drinkers	Tax saved per litre by moving below a tier threshold
Should a spirits company build a distillery in India?	Demand by price tier, tariffs on imports, local production cost, ageing time and cash tied up	Landed cost of imports after the tariff cut, against local production
Should we launch bottled water in Saudi Arabia?	Market size, local brands, price per litre, packaging and freight per litre, distribution	Freight and packaging per litre against the price people pay

So-what

Split growth into volume and price and mix early; most drinks answers live in one of those, or in a tax.

Using this in a case

Ask: which category and which part of the chain are we? Is the problem volume, price and mix, or cost? Which channels and packs? Is a tax, tariff or currency change involved?
Calculate: revenue change from volume and price and mix, profit per unit case or per hectolitre after excise, the tax saved per litre by moving below a sugar threshold, and the landed cost of imported drinks after tariffs.
Say: answer first, then the reason in volume, price and mix, or cost, the risk (often losing drinkers to cheaper or healthier choices) and the next step.

What a strong first answer sounds like

"A bottler earns a thin margin on a heavy product, and its biggest costs are packaging and sweetener, often bought in dollars. Since prices rose, I suspect the currency fell and input costs rose faster than the prices we could take. I would first split the profit fall into volume, price and mix, and input costs in local currency."

Common traps

Mixing up the brand owner and the bottler, which earn very different margins on very different revenues. Treating revenue growth as healthy when it is all price, while volume falls. Forgetting excise, which can be a large share of the shelf price. Assuming young people will simply start drinking alcohol later, when drinking has fallen in many markets. Ignoring the route to market: shelf space, coolers and small shops win volume. Reaching for a generic framework instead of the real driver: start from volume, price and mix, and the cost per case or per hectolitre.