Nestlé Waters North America
Nestlé Waters North America, Inc. is a business unit of Nestlé Waters that produces and distributes numerous brands of bottled water across North America. Continent-wide brands include Perrier and San Pellegrino. Bill Pearson, and David Colville. President and CEO, Tim Brown, left the company in early March 2017 to be a president and COO for Chobani, a yogurt company based in NY. New incoming President and CEO is Fernando Merce effective May 1, 2017. It is based in Stamford, Connecticut
Regional brands
Nestlé also produces bottled water under various brand names depending on the region. These brands include Arrowhead, Calistoga, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, Poland Spring, and Zephyrhills.Nestlé Pure Life has been produced by Nestlé Waters North America since 2002. Prior to that, it was known as Aberfoyle Springs and had been produced by the Aberfoyle Springs company since 1993. After purchasing the Aberfoyle Springs brand and facilities in 2000, Nestlé changed the name first, in 2002, to "Nestlé Pure Life Aberfoyle," and then to "Nestlé Pure Life Natural Spring Water". Nestlé also bottles the Montclair brand in its facilities. Nestlé's Aberfoyle Springs plant currently bottles two different waters: the on-site Aberfoyle spring water, and spring water tankered in from Cedar Valley Spring in Erin, Ontario. In addition, spring water is bottled on-site in Hope, British Columbia. In the United States, Nestlé Pure Life is a purified water.
Nestlé Waters is currently Canada's largest water bottling company, with two bottling facilities. The larger of the facilities is located in Aberfoyle, Ontario with the second facility located in Hope, British Columbia and warehouses located in Chilliwack, British Columbia and Laval, Quebec. In July 2020, Nestlé Canada announced that it had agreed to sell its Canadian water bottling business to Ice River Springs. The latter would acquire the source and bottling operations in Puslinch, Ontario and in Hope, British Columbia and an untapped well in Erin, Ontario.
Nestlé Waters sells three European Brands: Perrier, San Pellegrino and Acqua Panna.
Aquapod, manufactured by Nestlé Waters North America through the Ice Mountain brand, is a non-carbonated natural spring water, targeted towards children. It is packaged in an 11-ounce bottle, shaped like an orb. "With new orbtastic shape!" is the catch phrase commonly associated with the Aquapod range.
Poland Spring
Poland Spring is a brand of bottled water manufactured by a subsidiary of Nestlé. It was founded in 1845 by Hiram Ricker. Poland Spring water is derived from multiple sources in the state of Maine, including Poland Spring and Garden Spring in Poland, Clear Spring in Hollis, Evergreen Spring in Fryeburg, Spruce Spring in Pierce Pond Township, and White Cedar Spring in Dallas Plantation. Recently, the Poland Spring brand has adopted a bottle using 60% less plastic, as did the other Nestlé Waters North America brands. It is the top-selling spring water brand in the United States.Water sales
Maine's Bureau of Industrial and Labor Statistics listed 81 existing mineral springs in the past. Twenty-three were used for commercial bottling, with total sales of $400,000. $200,000 of these sales were by Poland Spring.Today Poland Spring sells the majority of its water in portable 8, 12, and 20 oz bottles; 500 ml, 700 ml, 1 L, and 1.5 L bottles, but also carries larger bottles usable in office or in home water dispensers. Smaller and bottles are also available for sale in most supermarkets, and for home delivery in the Northeastern United States. Other less popular varieties of Poland Spring include sparkling, lemon, lime, and distilled. All Poland Spring products are sold in plastic bottles. They are also the producers of the Aquapod line of products.
In the summer of 2005, Poland Spring changed the color of its bottle cap from dark green to clear. The reason for the color change was to remove the dye from the cap, which allows it to enter the recycling stream. Poland Spring later changed to a lighter bottle called the Eco-Shape which uses 30 percent less plastic. The new style made its début in November 2007.
Controversies
is the world's largest producer of bottled water and is frequently criticised for the ethics of its global control of limited water sources. Criticism of Nestlé centres around its limiting of local peoples' access to water resources as well as environmental concerns.Water sourcing issues
Ice Mountain has been part of the Great Lakes water use debate in which diversion of the basin's water for export has been controversial. In 2004, a Michigan court ordered pumping of Sanctuary springs to cease. After an appellate court overturned the cease and desist, the company and local groups came to an agreement to pump only per minute, which is comparable to other local beverage operations. Nestlé has run into similar local opposition when trying to locate a new source location near the headwaters of the White River in the upper lower peninsula of Michigan.Several towns in Maine have objected to the business practices of Poland Spring and its parent company Nestlé. In some towns, such as Fryeburg, Maine, Poland Spring actually buys the water from another company, the Fryeburg Water Co., and ships it to the Poland Spring bottling plant in Poland Spring. However, Fryeburg Water Co. also sells water to the town of Fryeburg.
The town of Fryeburg began to question the amount of water the company was selling to Poland Spring. In 2004, the town's water stopped temporarily because of a pump failure, but Poland Spring's operations were able to continue. The group H2O for ME wants to create a tax on water drawn for commercial purposes, however, Poland Spring said the tax would force the company into bankruptcy. State congressman Jim Wilfong proposed a 20 cent per tax be allowed to be voted on in a referendum, but the measure was defeated. He also believes that laws should be rearranged to place limits on the amount of groundwater landowners can pump out of their land.
The town of Sterling, Massachusetts is attempting to prevent Nestlé from pumping spring water from conservation restricted town land. Nestlé Waters North America has responded to an RFP issued by the Town of Clinton to purchase the Town of Clinton's Wekepeke aquifer water rights located in Sterling.
Residents have been organizing against a proposed bottling plant in the city of Phoenix, though details on the city's contract with Nestlé have not been released to the public.
In Canada, much of the water extracted by the company for its Nestlé Pure Life brand has been at a source in the village of Aberfoyle, Ontario in Puslinch, Ontario, located in Wellington County, Ontario and under the jurisdiction of the City of Guelph, Ontario. For some years, a local advocacy group, Wellington Water Watchers has expressed concern about the amount of groundwater being extracted by the company.
After the planned sale of the Nestlé Canada's water bottling business to Ice River Springs was announced in July 2020, Wellington Water Watchers said that this was "a victory for the people of Ontario... a response by Nestle to public pressure". In a later statement, however, a spokesperson said that Ontario should be phasing out the bottled water industry, a "low priority and frivolous use of the water taking".
Nearly a year earlier, the Wellington group demanded that the provincial government obtain an environmental assessment before renewing the company's licence to remove any groundwater. At the time, Nestlé’s permit to extract 3.6 million litres of water per day was close to coming up for renewal.
The most recent study by the City of Guelph, Ontario about the Aberfoyle well stated that Nestlé’s extraction of water "has not caused a decline or drop in water levels year after year" and that "water-taking at the current rate is sustainable at this point in time". In May 2020, the Grand River Source Water Protection Committee and Centre Wellington a township next to the Middlebrook well in Elora announced that "private permits to take water do not have a major impact on municipal water levels, because they are usually too far from municipal wells".