CORPORATE PROFILES: BOTTLED WATER
Nestlé/ Nestlé Waters/ Nestlé Waters North America
Nestlé was founded in 1866 in Switzerland by Henri Nestlé, a pharmacist, who
developed a food for babies unable to breastfeed. The company grew through
acquisitions. During World War II Nestlé focused on developing markets in Latin
America and selling Nescafe to troops. On its website, Nestlé notes: “The first
half of the 1990s proved to be favorable for Nestlé: trade barriers crumbled and
world markets developed into more or less integrated trading areas.” www.Nestlé
.com Today Nestlé. is the world’s largest food and beverage corporation with
annual sales over $70 billion.
Nestlé entered the bottled water market by buying Perrier in 1992 which had
become very successful in the U.S. “In April 2002, the [Perrier] Group changed
its name to Nestlé Waters, a token of Nestlé's decisive commitment to the bottled
water market, which now represents 9% of its sales. Today, Nestlé Waters is
established in 130 countries and markets 77 different brands produced in 33
countries.” Nestlé’s 109 factory sites around the globe will increase significantly if
their prediction that “Sustained growth patterns forecast a doubling of the bottled
water market by 2012” proves accurate. Nestlé Waters of North America is
located in Greenwich CT. www.Nestlé .com & www.Nestlé -waters.com/en
Brands—
Perrier—Bouillens spring, bought by French doctor in late 19th century, was sold
to an Englishman, then in 1947 sold back to a Frenchman where it thrived..
www.Nestlé .com
Vittel: Société Générale des Eaux Minérales de Vittel was formed in 1882 to
bottle mineral water from a spring in the Vosges Mountains of eastern France. By
June 1898 had sold its first million bottles. In 1992 Nestlé acquired a controlling
interest in the company. Today Vittel is one of the world's top ten best-selling
brands. www.Nestlé.com
Nestlé Pure Life
Introduced in 1998, this is treated/remineralized water developed for emerging
countries and since 2002 sold in the U.S. competing directly with Pepsi’s
Aquafina and CocaCola’s Dasani (see below). www.Nestlé .com
Other of Nestlé’s 77 bottled water brands include:
Bottled in U.S. Arrowhead (CA) , Calistoga, Deer Park (PA & FL) , Ice Mountain
(MI), Ozarka (TX), Poland Spring (ME), and Zephyrhills (FL). Nestlé’ also owns
Crystal Geyser with locations in Mt. Shasta CA, Olancha Peak CA, Benton TN,
Salem SC and Moultonborough NH, although the Crystal Springs website gives
no indication of this. Nestlé has also bought Cobb Mountain Springs just north of
Napa Valley CA, a small independent that went bankrupt. This list is not
definitive of Nestlé brands since the company is aggressively prospecting for new
sites and purchasing existing sites.
Nestlé and plastic:
In 1969, a year after “Vittel revolutionized the industry when it launched the first
PVC bottle in May 1968,” Nestlé acquired a 30% stake in the company. Nestlé
then introduced bottles using the all-new plastic PET bottles in 1992. www.Nestlé
.com
Danone Waters of North America/Danone Group
Danone’s history is intertwined with the history of “no-deposit, no-return” bottles.
The company was formed in 1966 when two French glass companies merged “to
cope with changing market trends toward ‘no-deposit, no-return’ bottles”.
Through mergers, including with Nabisco’s European biscuit division, Danone
became the third largest European food corporation by 1986. Today it operates in
120 countries and is best known in the U.S. for Dannon yogurt. www.danone.com
Danone entered the bottled water market by buying Evian in 1969. The Danone
Group claims to be the international leader in bottled water sales by volume.
www.danone.com In 2002 Dannon hooked up with CocaCola to form CocaCola
Danone Waters. Coca-Cola now manages the marketing, sales and distribution
for the Danone’s water brands in the U.S. and Canada. Inside the Bottle p 21
(Also see Coca-Cola below)
In 2002, Danone Waters of North America formed a joint venture with Coca Cola
forming CCDA Waters LLC in which Danone had a 49% share. The CokeDanone deal in 2002 catapulted Coke into second place in overall bottled water
sales in North America. In April 2005 Coke bought out the Danone share and
now has full ownership of Dannon, Sparklets and Alhambra brands. (phone call
to Coca Cola headquarters 9/1/05)
Under the agreement, Groupe Danone will contribute the assets of its retail
bottled spring and source water business in the United States, including five
production facilities, a license for the use of the Dannon and Sparkletts brands as
well as ownership of several value brands. In addition to a cash payment for a 51
percent equity interest in the partnership, Atlanta-based Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO)
will provide marketing, distribution and management.
The partnership's assets will include Danone Waters of North America's
production facilities in Mount Shasta and Anaheim, Calif.; Grand Prairie, Texas;
High Springs, Fla.; and Milesburg, Pa. Atlanta Business Journal 6-17-02
Major bottled water brands:
Evian: French mineral water. Source first discovered in 1789. Now sold in 125
countries. In US being distributed by Coca-Cola.
Volvic: Water from the Auvergne in France.
Regional brands in U.S.-- DS Waters of America
DS Waters of America was created in 2003 as a joint venture with Suntory, the
Japanese giant trading company. Danone has announced plans to sell its 50%
stake. (Note: the corporate juggling is very difficult to track. Sparkletts was listed
as part of this deal. It is now owned by Coca-Cola - see below.)
Sierra Springs Founded in 1950 in Sacramento. Now marketed from Texas to
Wyoming. Difficult to find sources. One source is near Mt. Palomar in southern
CA.
Kentwood Springs From “deep artesian spring in the woods of Kentwood LA.”
Sold in LA, MS, AL.
Hinkley Springs. Started in Chicago 1888. Sold throughout the Midwest.
Belmont Springs Source is spring on hill above Belmont MA. Sold in New
England.
Crystal Springs Source “can be found in the Chattahoochee National Forest,
within the quiet woodlands west of Ocala, Florida, and from deep in the earth
near Lancaster, Pennsylvania.” DS Waters may also own Crystal Springs brand
drawn from the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains in CA
www.crystalspringswater.net Also produced from Albuquerque municipal water
(not confirmed)
www.water.com/brands.asp (Not all water sources were identified.)
AquaPenn: More plastic, less water In 1999 Dannone Group purchased
AquaPenn , one of the largest U.S. independent bottlers, just after the company
“introduced the first lightweight 8-oz. PET... spring water bottle that is designed
specifically to fill a single-serving niche.” www.nacsonline.com Brands include
Castle Rock, Pure American, AquaPenn and Great American.
Sports Cap Recall Danone promotes its innovative sport cap; however its
website calls consumers’ attention to the sport cap recall by the U.S. Consumer
Product Safety Commission as a safety hazard to children.
www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml03/03185.html
PEPSI/Aquafina
Begun by a pharmacist in the early 1900s in North Carolina, today Pepsi ranks as
the fourth largest food and beverage company in the world, having merged with
Frito-Lay in the late 1960s, bought out Tropicana in 1998 and merged with
Quaker Oats in 2001.
In 1994, Pepsi got into bottled water with the launching of Aquafina in Wichita KS
which was marketed in southern and western states over the next three years
and then expanded into the Midwest. “By that time, close to 75 per cent of the
Pepsi bottling system was producing and selling Aquafina.” (Inside the Bottle)
“Aquafina was America’s best-selling national brand of bottled water based on
2003 sales volume.” www.aquafina.com
Pepsi says it has 33 Aquafina purification sites in US and Canada; however
government sources only list 11 of 19 in the U.S. These are in Austin TX, Ayer
MA, Cheverly MD, Cicero NY, Columbia SC, Detroit MI, Johnstown PA, Knoxville
TN, Lantham NY, Mesquite TX, and Twinsburg OH. (Inside the Bottle)
Note that these bottles do not say spring water. That’s right, they are filled with
municipal water for which Pepsi pays very little and you pay a lot for water in their
bottles. Pepsi uses uses a 7-step treatment process trademarked as “HydRO-7.”
This consists of pre-filtration to remove particles from the water (what your
municipal system does) followed by a polishing filter to remove particles missed
by pre-filtration, followed by high-intensity light to protect against “naturally
occurring organic substances,” followed by reverse osmosis to get rid of 98% of
Total Dissolved Solids, followed by charcoal filtration to isolate trace elements
affecting taste, followed by another polishing filter, and finally ozonation to keep
away “unwanted particles.” www.aquafina.com
The question is how much of this is necessary? What is already done by your
municipal system? What could you do at much less cost with a good home filter?
And what gets into the water from the plastic bottle (See “What You Should Know
About Plastic Water Bottles,” Sierra Club Water Privatization Task Force)
Aquafina can claim to be regulated by EPA as well as FDA since it uses tap
water regulated by EPA which does not regulate spring water. However, Pepsi
does have at least one spring water label -- Dowser Spring Water in Clayton NY
Pepsi has historically used a system of separately owned bottlers around the
country. However, this is now changing. Pepsi Bottling Ventures was formed with
the Japanese multinational corporation Suntory International which has a 65%
investment. (See also Danone) Through this joint venture, Pepsi has
consolidated five PepsiCo owned bottlers to create one of the largest Pepsi
bottlers in the U.S. which distributes Aquafina as well as Starbucks Frappucinno.
www.hoovers.com/pepsi-bottling-ventures/--ID__60877--/free-co-factsheet.xhtml
See Polaris Institute’s Corporate Profile PepsiCo, p.12, for list of schools in US
which have signed exclusivity contracts to sell Pepsi products.
Coca-Cola/Dasani
Predating Pepsi by about 20 years, Coca-Cola was founded in Atlanta, Georgia
in 1886, also by a pharmacist. Within a decade it was being distributed
throughout the U.S. Coca-Cola is the only one of the top four which has not
diversified into non-beverage products. “Coke sells nearly 400 beverage brands
in close to 200 countries” with revenues in 2003 of $21 billion. (Inside the Bottle,
p. 20) Despite this focus, Coca-Cola was a late comer to the U.S. bottled water
scene.
Coke, like Pepsi, makes its money by selling its syrup to bottlers and had to
figure out how to profit just from selling water. Its first forays into the U.S. market
were unsuccessful efforts at marketing spring water—first Belmont Springs in the
early 1980s, sold to Suntory in 1989, and then Mendota Springs in the 1990s.
Meanwhile Pepsi’s Aquafina was taking off. By 1999, Coke also turned to
municipal water marketed under the Dasani label, realizing it could profit from
selling a mineral package to the bottlers. By 2002, the Dasani brand was second
only to Aquafina in U.S. sales. (Inside the Bottle, p. 20-21).
In 2002, Coke formed a joint venture with Danone Waters of North America
forming CCDA Waters LLC in which Coke had a 51% share. The Coke-Danone
deal in 2002 catapulted Coke into second place in overall bottled water sales in
North America. In April 2005 Coke bought out the Danone share and now has full
ownership of Dannon, Sparklets and Alhambra brands. It has a distribution
agreement with Danone for the Evian brand. (phone call to Coca Cola
headquarters 9/1/05)
Dannon Natural Spring: Bottled in the U.S. and Canada since 1996. Full list of
sources unavailable but includes Mt. Shasta CA.
Sparkletts: Marketed in Los Angeles as “pure, refreshing water” not spring water.
Alhambra First sold as distilled water in 1902. Available in Passadena CA. No
listing of specific source.
Coke produced its first bottled water in 1970 in Austria with BonAqua, now sold
throughout Europe; however, when it rolled out its Dasani bottled water in the
United Kingdom, in March 2004, the entire batch of 500,000 bottles was found to
contain levels of bromate - a substance linked with an increased cancer risk - in
excess of UK legal standards. Coke first withdrew its bottles and then retreated
from the British market altogether. To add to Coke’s woes, the British Foods
Standards Agency launched an investigation into the labeling claim that Dasani
is "pure, still water" given that the water is drawn from municipal mains at CocaCola's factory in Sidcup, Kent.
George Wright, The Guardian, March 19, 2004
www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1173707,00.html
Nor has Coca Cola been well received in India. Protests against the company for
the taking of groundwater creating severe water shortages and polluting water
and soil around its bottling plants have been going on for more than 10 years in
the southern state of Kerala some of which are featured in the documentary
Thirst. The bottling plant in Plachimada has been shut down now for over sixteen
months because the local village council (panchayat) has refused to renew
Coca-Cola's license to operate. When the High Court instructed the council to
issue the license, the state government of Kerala, took Coca-Cola to court over
its abuse of groundwater. http://www.indiaresource.org/news/2005/1086.html
Crystal Geyser Roxanne
Not one of the four big corporations but definitely a player, Crystal Geyser
Roxane is a San Francisco-based privately held bottler. Company bottles at the
site of its springs which are located in California on the slopes of Mt. Shasta and
Olancha Peak near Mt. McKinley, in Salem SC (location not given), in Benton TN
in the Cherokee National Forest, and in Moultonville NH.
www.crystalgeyserasw.com/sources/
In 2003, the Manchester NH-based Union Leader did a story because Crystal
Geyser Roxanne was buying Castle Springs, the local Moultonville NH company.
There is very little information on Crystal Geyser Roxanne so here is what the
Union Leader NH June 8, 2003 had to say:
“Until New Hampshire, we found the springs (amid protected forests) and then
built a plant around it,” he said, adding, “We bottle at the source. We make our
bottles at the plants and bottle the water right there. The company began bottling
its ‘Alpine Spring Water’ in 1990, drawing from a spring at Olancha Peak near
14,500-foot Mount Whitney. It has since opened plants at Benton, Tenn., in the
Cherokee National Forest, and at a forest-protected spring below 14,162-foot
Mount Shasta in California, the plant that exports some of its water to Japan.
“The small guys
Allen described Crystal Geyser Roxane as a company of fewer than 300
employees — “the last small guys still playing nationally” — in a market
dominated by giants like Nestlé , Pepsi and Coca Cola.
“Crystal Geyser is certified to sell in Europe, but does not currently distribute its
water there. In Japan, it has what Allen described as a “working relationship” with
the Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., a corporation with ties in China, Thailand, Korea,
Egypt, Germany, Sweden and other countries”
Bottled Water Statistics
The Top 10 Bottle Water Brands in the US by wholesale dollar sales and market
share.
1. Aquafina (PepsiCo) $936 million 11.3 %
2. Dasani (Coca-Cola) $834 million 10 %
3. Poland Spring (Nestlé Waters) $649 million 7.8%
4. Arrowhead (Nestlé Waters) $546 million 6.6%
5. Deer Park (Nestlé Waters) $356 million 4.3%
6. Crystal Geyser (CGWC) $335 million 4%
7. Ozarka (Nestlé Waters) $236 million 2.8%
8. ZephyrHills (Nestlé Waters) $215 million 2.5%
9. Ice Mountain (Nestlé Waters) $208 million 1.7%
10. Evian (Coca-Cola/Danone) $145 million 1.7%
(Source Beverage Marketing Corporation.) http://www.mindadvertising.com/sectors/sector_softdrinks.htm
For detailed information on the bottled water industry from an activist perspective,
Inside the Bottle, An Expose of the Bottled Water Industry, Tony Clarke, Polaris
Institute, 2005 Also see www.insidethebottle.org