With a 20 per cent market share, Oshee Polska is already second in the market for isotonic sports drinks, with the Coca-Cola owned Powerade dominating the category in Poland and the PepsiCo brand Gatorade taking the third spot.
Dominik Doliński, a company spokesperson, told the WBJ that the isotonic sports drinks market is currently worth PLN ZL135m (€33m) and that Oshee’s objective is to take the lead in the entire segment.
Bottled water
Meanwhile, Poland is proving fertile ground for other branded beverage makers. July saw Nestle Waters opening a new water bottling factory in the country to support the development of its Dar Natury brand there.
Currently Nestle Waters is the second biggest bottled water firm in Poland with sales of about €90m in 2009. Last year volumes were up 2.2 per cent and value rose 1.3 per cent.
The company already has a Dar Natury factory which it opened 17 years ago in Czestoniew in the center part of Poland but saw a need for an additional factory to satisfy demand in the home and office delivery market.
More than €5m was invested in the building of the new facility in Rzeniszow, in the south of the country.
The factory, which covers an area of 36,000m2 and has the capacity to produce 40m litres of a year, will focus on the manufacture of large 18.9 litre bottles for office and home use.
Diversification
And in a report published in April this year, market analysts, Euromonitor, predicted that by 2014 the soft drinks market in Poland will be more sophisticated and diversified, with manufacturers expected to develop new products in terms of flavours, ingredients, and packaging formats.
The analysts reported that nutraceutical products will have greater prominence in the category while greater exposure to varied global cuisine will further opportunities for manufacturers to introduce exotic flavours.
They noted that although Poland's economy continued to be resilient amidst the global economic crisis, concerns associated with the slowdown did affect shoppers’ decisions, with a hike in private label and discount store purchases creating a polarization of the soft drinks market there.
But while some consumers are switching to lower priced products, the analysts report that there is also growing category of Polish consumer that is showing increasing interest in big brand drink names and these are maintaining a high level of consumption despite the economic slowdown.