Is a large bottle of beer easier to sell?
In recent years, 1L tinplate beer bottles have become popular, and major manufacturers have been expanding their bottle sizes and increasing their capacity. Even 5L and 10L ultra large barrels of beer have appeared in various channels.
The reason is simple: using large bottles to reduce costs and prices, businesses are willing to promote, consumers are willing to buy, and industry sales have also increased. This move has achieved astonishing results in both the beverage and beer markets.
However, the competition in the industry has shifted from deep to shallow, which also indicates that the beer market has not yet found a new competitive core in order to return to the lower level of volume capacity, which is worthy of vigilance.
Is it easier to sell large bottles of beer?
As a popular Crispy fried chicken in the beer market, what does Venus beer bring to the market besides the popularity of Chinese tea beer?
Under the operation of Venus, with the popularity of Maojian Brewing, Bingtanghulu Brewing and Jasmine Tea Brewing, 1L tinplate beer bottle, a rare specification and packaging, has become popular in the beer market.
In the past few decades, the most popular option in the Chinese beer market for a considerable period of time was green glass bottles, packaged in 600ML bottles. The term 'big green stick' comes from this.
Later on, some beer brands showcased their popularity, high-end, and youthfulness through their appearance, using 500mL transparent glass bottles that were slightly smaller in size.
Aluminum cans with easy to pull lids of various sizes have always existed in the beer market. In the early years, there were not many distribution channels, but in recent years, new channels such as e-commerce and instant retail have emerged, and canned beer has gradually become more popular in the market, with a beer canning rate approaching 30%.
Bottled beer has been used since the era of draft beer. However, previously it was mostly used in small B scenarios such as catering, and C-end channels were not common.
After the popularity of tinplate packaging in Jinxing Beer, the beer market rushed to expand the bottle size, and 1L packaging gradually became standard.
China Resources Snow, Tsingtao Beer (600600. SH), the Pearl River Beer and Budweiser's Jinlongquan Beer have launched 1L cans of beer, mainly for fresh beer, tea beer and other differentiated categories. On the one hand, it is suitable for younger channels and scenarios, and on the other hand, it is differentiated from its traditional beer.
Chongqing Beer (600132. SH), a subsidiary of Carlsberg, explicitly stated in its financial report that it regards 1L packaged products as an important lever for high-end development, and almost all core categories have launched 1L iron canned products.
In traditional channels such as KA and bulk snacks, we have also seen a significant increase in large bottles of beer packaged in 1L tin cans. Even 5L and 10L large barrels of beer often have a C-end. Among them, there are many proprietary brands from channel merchants.
Under the joint promotion of beer brands and distributors, the penetration rate of canned beer is increasing. Industry data shows that the glass bottle rate in the entire beer market has decreased from 75% in 2020 to 55% in 2025.
The scene determines the specifications
In recent years, with the improvement of products in the Chinese beer market, a round of industry wide high-end transformation has arrived as scheduled, and the price range has been upgraded from 358 to 5810, which has been maintained for many years. The changes in beer market specifications and packaging are based on this.
It is precisely because the product has been upgraded that people feel the need to upgrade the specifications and packaging. In the early days of Chinese beer, light lager was popular, with similar flavors and no differentiation in products, so there was no need to overthink packaging.
Nowadays, there are a variety of beers available, including classic, draft, white beer, craft beer, non-alcoholic beer, etc., all of which require selecting appropriate packaging and specifications based on their respective target audiences and main scenarios.
The price of beer has increased, so everyone has more space. So, the industry collectively chose aluminum or tin cans with higher costs outside of glass bottles.
Previously, the vast majority of beer consumption was completed through catering channels; Even if consumed by oneself, it is mostly for pairing with meals. The glass bottle and its corresponding specifications are completely sufficient.
Now it's very different. Beer rarely appears in the business bureau, and the proportion of catering channels is also decreasing. Industry data shows that the proportion of beer drinking channels has decreased from 55% before 2020 to 40% today.
Beer, now more commonly seen in gatherings, camping, and other settings, requires the satisfaction of drinking from large bottles. However, large bottles are not suitable for glass bottles and aluminum cans, which gives tinplate a lot of room for development.
Of course, for beer manufacturers, large bottles of beer are easier to sell. Suppose you are planning to go camping tomorrow and go shopping at the supermarket tonight. If it's all in small packages, even if you carry the whole box, sales will still be limited; If there happens to be a large bucket of food that you like, the price can be much cheaper. The satisfaction of carrying a few buckets is comparable to non-traditional packaging.
If we only calculate based on the cost of single bottle packaging, tinplate is higher than aluminum cans and even higher than glass bottles. The capacity of 1L tinplate packaging is equivalent to 3 small aluminum cans. Calculated based on unit cost, it actually reduces the overall packaging cost of the industry.
When market competition enters the stage of large quantity, saturated management, and simple roughness, it actually means that the points that can be used for competition in the industry, such as products, channels, brands, etc., are no longer sufficient. When there is no roll left, it returns to the low-level stage of volume capacity.
The competition in the beer market goes from deep to shallow, and the core reason is self-evident. Chinese beer has entered the stock stage, and it is unlikely to see a significant increase in production and sales in the short term; The comprehensive high-end trend is receding, and the industry is moving towards a direction of improvement, entering the second half of single point breakthroughs and refined operations.
Take Carlsberg Chongqing Beer as an example, there is already a conflict between large bottle volume and high-end flavor. This strategy also indirectly indicates that Carlsberg has shifted to passive defense, using volume growth rather than enhancing product and brand value to solve its failure in the Chinese market.
Only when the beer market finds new competitive cores or industry giants find new development directions, can we bring the market back into a new cycle of value enhancement.
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