A bottle of water has increased by just a few cents, but distributors are losing sleep: Wahaha and C'estbon are "raising wholesale prices while keeping retail prices unchanged" — whose pockets will the extra money come from?
“Don't underestimate this mere one yuan. Water business owners all know that if they raise the price, they're afraid of losing customers, but if they don't, their losses will be quite significant. Selling a thousand barrels a month, the loss would be a thousand yuan if they don't raise the price. Nowadays, it's getting harder and harder to do the water business.” said a distributor of C'estbon bottled water.
What's keeping this boss awake at night is a round of price hikes that have quietly arrived. Interestingly, consumers are unlikely to notice this round of price increases.
Price Increase at Wholesale, No Increase at Retail
According to reports from Southern Metropolis Daily and Yangcheng Pai in June 2026, Wahaha and China Resources Beverages have recently issued price adjustment notices to distributors in multiple regions: Starting from July 1st, the supply price of Wahaha purified water (596ml × 24 bottles) per case will be increased by 0.5 to 1 yuan; also starting from July 1st, the supply price of C'estbon bottled water (18.9L) per barrel will be increased by 1 yuan. This is not C'estbon's first price adjustment this year. Since April 1st, the supply price of its 2.08L × 8 bottles specification per case has been increased by 4 to 5 yuan.
In response to the price increase rumors, Wahaha issued a unified response via its official Weibo on June 27th: Affected by the fluctuations in packaging material costs, the company has adjusted the channel wholesale prices of its water products in different packaging specifications, “with both increases and decreases” to ensure the stable operation of its distributor partners. However, the terminal retail prices of all purified water products remain unchanged, and there will be no change in the prices consumers pay.
Key data: The supply price of Wahaha 596ml × 24 bottles per case will increase by 0.5 to 1 yuan; the supply price of C'estbon 18.9L bottled water per barrel will increase by 1 yuan; both will be implemented starting from July 1st (Source: Southern Metropolis Daily, Yangcheng Pai, Wahaha's official Weibo, June 26 - 27, 2026)
To interpret this operation: The retail price on paper remains unchanged, which stabilizes consumers' emotions; however, the increase in the channel wholesale price means that the cost pressure is first placed on the distributors. The money is first taken from this middle layer.
The Cost of a Bottle of Water is Hidden in a Barrel of Oil
Why are enterprises adjusting prices at this time? The answer lies in a type of plastic called PET.
Zhu Danpeng, an analyst in the Chinese food industry, analyzed that the price adjustments by drinking water enterprises this time are mainly due to the significant increase in the cost of raw materials such as PET plastic packaging materials. Data from Business Society shows that as of April 2026, the cumulative increase in the spot price of domestic bottle - grade polyester chips has exceeded 40%, directly driving up the overall production cost of beverage bottles by nearly 30%. Taking Wankai New Materials, a leading enterprise in integrated PET chips, as an example, its quotation for bottle - grade PET has increased from 6,100 yuan per ton on January 4th this year to 7,200 yuan per ton on June 26th, an increase of about 18% within the year.
More importantly, the real major cost of bottled water doesn't lie in the water itself. According to the prospectus of Nongfu Spring in 2019, the cost of water intake and treatment only accounts for about 0.6% of the operating cost, while the PET cost accounts for about 30% of the sales cost. That is to say, what determines the cost of a bottle of water is not the water source, but the plastic bottle.
The upstream core raw material of PET is based on crude oil. Thus, there is such a transmission chain: The increase in international oil prices drives up the prices of raw materials such as PTA and ethylene glycol, which is then transmitted to PET chips, and finally affects the cost of beverage bottles. The few cents increase in the price of a bottle of water actually originates from a barrel of oil.
Golden saying: What determines the price of a bottle of water is never just the water itself, but the bottle that holds it and the barrel of oil behind the bottle.
Why “Only Increasing Wholesale Prices” is a Disguised Price War
Yao Xin, the secretary - general of the Commercial Industry Committee of the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade, pointed out that Wahaha's price adjustment strategy of “only increasing the wholesale price and not increasing the retail price” has, to the greatest extent, stabilized the market sentiment at the consumer end, avoiding consumers' resistance and a decline in sales volume caused by the terminal price increase. However, almost all the cost pressure has been transferred to distributors at all levels, and the terminal channels have become the biggest bearers of this cost fluctuation. In his view, this is essentially a disguised price war.
To understand this statement, we need to go back to the fierce “water war” in the past two years. In April 2024, Nongfu Spring launched green - bottled purified water, with 12 bottles priced at 9.9 yuan, bringing the price per bottle down to 0.74 yuan, which was regarded by the market as the fuse of a new round of price war. Subsequently, Wahaha, C'estbon, Jinmailang, etc. all followed suit. In some regions, there was even a price inversion for C'estbon, where the purchase price was 1 yuan per bottle and the terminal selling price was 0.9 yuan per bottle. Distributors in Sichuan, Guangxi and other places once withdrew from the network.
The cost of this melee is reflected in the financial reports. The revenue of China Resources Beverages' packaged drinking water business in the first half of 2025 decreased by 23.1% year - on - year, among which the revenue of small - sized bottled water decreased by 26.2%. The company's annual profit is expected to decrease by about 40% year - on - year. For this reason, in the second half of 2025, as the regulators clearly stated to “prevent involutionary and vicious competition,” this price war gradually subsided.
It's worth noting that Nongfu Spring, which first “stirred up the situation,” was not the biggest beneficiary. In April 2024, it entered the market with low - priced green - bottled purified water, and the market once thought it would reshape the pattern. However, according to the data from the FMCG monitoring platform “Mashangying,” it was Wahaha, which completed a leadership change in 2024 and launched a combination of strategies such as “stabilizing the market, expanding the network, and seizing market share,” that really captured market share in C'estbon's traditional strongholds. C'estbon's share in the purified water segment decreased from over 70% at the beginning of 2024 to about 45% in October 2025. Understanding this ebb and flow, we can understand why Wahaha and C'estbon are making subtle moves one after another in this round of price adjustments.
Looking further upstream in the industrial chain, this round of cost transmission has also pushed PET manufacturers to the forefront. As a leading supplier of bottle - grade PET, the price changes of Wankai New Materials have almost become a “barometer” of the cost of bottled water. Whether the price of a bottle of water increases or not affects an entire chain from crude oil, PTA, PET, to bottle factories, water enterprises, and distributors, and each link is redistributing this cost.
Who is Affected by This Round of Price Hikes
The first group directly affected is hundreds of thousands of water and beverage distributors. A distributor from Jiaxing, Zhejiang, admitted that he predicted the price increase of bottle chips at the beginning of the year. What he's most worried about is that consumers at the terminal won't accept the price increase. So he had to lock in orders for the third quarter in advance and stock up on a batch of goods before the price adjustment. The cost of the price increase and the low prices of e - commerce's 10 - billion - yuan subsidies are squeezing them from both ends.
The second group is consumers. Currently, the retail price remains unchanged, but as the packaging material cost continues to rise, it's unknown how long the balance of “channels bear the cost, terminals keep the price stable” can last. Bottled water is shifting from a simple “price war” to a multi - dimensional competition in terms of water source, brand, and channels.
The third group is a wider range of downstream industries of PET. From other bottled beverages to edible oil barrels and take - out food boxes, all products using PET as packaging materials are on the same cost curve. Bottled water is just the first one to be pushed to the forefront and has to make a statement.
So, going back to that boss's insomnia. What he's struggling with is not the one - yuan increase itself, but a more difficult judgment: In the triple squeeze of oil prices, costs, and price wars, should he follow the price increase or not? The few cents increase in the price of a bottle of water first measures the situation of this middle group of people.
When the price of a bottle of water increases by a few cents, should the cost be borne by the manufacturer, the distributor, or the consumer? Welcome to share your views in the comment section.
This article is from the WeChat official account “BT Finance” (ID: btcjv1), written by BT Finance, and published by 36Kr with authorization.