Take-home bottled water is up 8%, comfortably exceeding the total grocery market growth rate of 3.1% and putting the category value at more than half a billion pounds.

There was a potential risk of water becoming a commodity, but this year's trends have shown this not to be the case. The growth of brands has caught up with own label - both are growing at around 8% y-o-y - and branded bottled water has its retained majority share with 53%. 

Plain, flavoured, still and sparkling bottled water are all in solid year-on-year growth, but flavoured water has outperformed plain - a trend not seen for more than four years. 

The growth in flavoured water is from successful branded offerings in flavoured sparkling, up 48% year on year, helped by increased NPD. The flavoured water shopper is predominately younger, within the C2DE social classes and perhaps more influenced by trends. 

The growth in sparkling flavoured water is attributable both to existing water shoppers adding sparkling flavoured to their baskets and to shoppers who previously were not buying bottled water at all. Brands vs own labelSource: Kantar Worldpanel 52 w/e 5 November 2017