Federal Statistical Office: 6.3% less mineral water was produced in 2021 than in the previous year
News General news
- In 2021, 12.4 billion litres of mineral water were produced in Germany, of which more than half were low-carbonated or non-carbonated
- Imports of mineral water down by 8.5 % in 2021
Drinking plenty of water is especially important in summer. The classic thirst quencher is mineral water. However, 6.3% less of this was produced in 2021 than in the previous year. As reported by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), around 12.4 billion litres of natural mineral water were produced in Germany in 2021. In purely mathematical terms, that was around 34 million one-litre bottles per day. Compared to the record year 2018 with a total mineral water production of 14.4 billion litres, the decline last year was 13.9 %. The reasons for this could be, on the one hand, the closed gastronomy during the Corona pandemic, but also the growing competition from water filters and sparkling devices in households that enrich tap water with carbonic acid.
Volume of "medium" and "still" produced increased by 53 % compared to 2011
Also in 2021, more than half of the mineral water produced contained little or no carbonic acid (58.9%) - as in all years since 2016. The production volume of the variants "medium" and "still" has increased by 52.6% compared to 2011 to 7.3 billion litres in 2021. At that time, it was still 4.8 billion litres. In contrast, the production of classic sparkling water with high carbon dioxide content has declined by more than a quarter (-28.2 %) since 2011 to 5.1 billion litres in 2021 (2011: 7.1 billion litres).
Imports of natural mineral water: predominantly "still" water was imported in 2021
In 2021, around 935.4 million litres of mineral water were imported into Germany. This was 8.5% less than in 2020. Still mineral water dominated imports in 2021 with a share of 87.3% (816.7 million litres). The main source of still water is France: 87.8 % was imported from the neighbouring country in 2021. Imported sparkling water (including "medium"), on the other hand, mostly came from Italy (66.7 %).
A different picture emerged with the export of mineral water: here, mainly carbonated water was exported in 2021, with a share of 63.1 %. In total, around 323.1 million litres of mineral water were exported in 2021 - an increase of 5.0 % compared to 2020. The most important customer for the sparkling variant and the non-carbonated variant was the Netherlands (35.6 % and 39.5 % respectively).
