SAMOA — A bottled water war is brewing in paradise.
A new bottled water company that is based in the South Pacific island nation of Samoa and will sell its brand around the world is taking direct aim at another South Seas bottled water source: Fiji. This according to a recent report on The Water Connoisseur newsletter and in news reports from New Zealand.
On its Web site, the South Pacific Water Co. not only touts the benefits of its new brand of water from Samoa but takes aim at Fiji, another Pacific island nation that is the source of Fiji Water, the upscale brand headquartered in Los Angeles, CA, and sold worldwide.
Citing Samoa’s benefits as an ecological paradise with very pure water, the South Pacific Water Co. Web site says Samoa has “no armed police, no armed military like Fiji, no immediate neighbours, no cultural unrest like Fiji, no roll call for the poor — currently numbering tens of thousands in Fiji, if not hundreds of thousands… .” The company also says “Samoa, thankfully, has no commercial sugar production like Fiji,” an industry which it says introduces pesticides and herbicides into water.
Apparently, there has been no response from Fiji Water; its parent company, Roll International; or the nation of Fiji; but in a separate announcement reported by The Fiji Times, Fiji Water said it has acquired New Zealand-based SpringFresh Limited, the 10th-largest bottled water brand in New Zealand, and will continue to sell the SpringFresh brand.
South Pacific Water Co. says it will draw its water from a confined aquifer beneath a nature preserve on Upolu Island, the easternmost of Samoa’s two principal islands. The bottled water is to be sold in the United States, Australia, China, India and New Zealand, according to news reports, based on an initial company investment of about US $7 million (19 million Samoa tala).
The total land area of Samoa, located about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, is slightly less than that of the US state of Rhode Island, and it has a population of about 217,000. Samoa and Fiji, which is southwest of Samoa, are separated by 1,000 miles of tropical ocean. The independent nation of Samoa, formerly called Western Samoa, is distinct from the nearby US territory of American Samoa.
Fiji is larger than Samoa (slightly smaller than the US state of New Jersey and with a population of 932,000), is more developed and has experienced periods of political turmoil since becoming independent from Great Britain in 1970.
