NOTE TO EDITOR:
June:
We believe that we don't have enough water on the Island and we are going to ship bottled water to China? Let China bottle their own water.
I guess they are struggling to fill those empty ships with something for the backhaul to China. They ship us sophisticated computers and electronic equipment, we package water. Hewers of wood and drawers of water we are.
Michael

http://www.canada.com/nanaimodailynews/news/business/story.html?id=6373f26a-98a7-4286-b1b2-09b52625e961

Island company gets Olympic contract
Comox Valley business will sell glacial water at swimming centre
Jeff Lee, Canwest News Service
Published: Friday, August 15, 2008

A Comox Valley, B.C., bottling company has landed a lucrative contract to market Canadian glacial water in China at Beijing's national swimming centre, the iconic Water Cube.

The bottles, which Natural Glacial Waters manufactures itself, have the venue's distinctive ceiling bubbles blown into the bottom half.

For the Olympic period, it can't sell the bottles of water inside the Cube since that is the territory of Coca-Cola, an International Olympic Committee top sponsor. But Feng Hong Guang, the company's managing director, said Water Cube water is already being stocked in stores around Beijing and demand has already reached about 1,000 boxes, or about 1,200 litres a week.

It all may seem like a small start, but Feng said market research shows that within three years the company could sell upwards of 120 million litres of water in China.

"It is rather small at this point, but my ambition is very high and we already have made some significant improvements," he said.

NGW, which markets the Icefield and Neve brands of water, signed the deal with the Water Cube Corporation of Beijing late last year and is also working on another deal with Water Cube that would see the Icefield brand carried in Cube bottles.

The deal allows NGW, which already has a share of the Japanese and Taiwanese bottled water market, to hook on to one of the most recognizable Chinese brands as it expands into the lucrative mainland China market.

"This deal is giving us a tremendous potential for business," Feng said. "We've just started into the mainland China market and we think this will help us."

According to a 2006 market report by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, China is the world's third-largest consumer of bottled water, with more than 15 billion litres of water expected to be sold annually by 2008. Only the United States and Mexico consume more.

China, with the fastest-growing economy in the world, is increasingly turning to bottled water because of severe water pollution. According to the Chinese government, water from more than half the mainstream rivers and lakes, and more than one-third of ground water sources, is too polluted for humans to drink.

But the Chinese bottled water market is fragmented, layered with bureaucracy and plagued with distribution problems. The store price for half-litre bottles of water is also very low, around 3 Yuan or about 45 cents a bottle.

But Feng sees in China a tremendous opportunity to sell bottled water virtually straight from British Columbia glaciers. And he isn't scared of the competition.

The fact the company beat out Coca-Cola's Dasani water for post-Olympic rights was a huge lift, he said.

Natural Glacial Waters, based at Fanny Bay on Vancouver Island, has two provincial water licences that allow it to draw up to four million litres of glacial spring water daily from the Rosewall Creek and Adam
River Schoen Glacier watersheds.

It also brags that it does not add minerals or flouride to its product and has an extremely low concentration of total dissolved solids.

© The Daily News (Nanaimo) 2008