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Greenland sells the Arctic – in bottles
(beveragemanager.net) - The ongoing climate change is hard on the island under the icecap. Hence, the people of Greenland are discovering their natural resources. The plan: turning ice and water into export best sellers. However, only a few companies are willing to make the commitment. Getting their businesses going, they are encountering quite a few hurdles along the way.
Endless blue provides the perfect backdrop and contrast for a bright white iceberg. A bottle of water sits next to it. This is the image Canadian enterprise Iceberg Canada Corporation has posted on its website to make visitors to the site and potential customers thirsty for Arctic refreshment. After all, the transparent liquid distributed by the company under the name "Glace Rare Iceberg Water" is more than just simple water: the carafe silhouetted bottles harness the powers of liquid icebergs – and according to the promotional copy, it is indeed “the purest natural water on earth.”
Harvested from ice that is about 10,000 years old, a beverage is created – a health and lifestyle product on which the targeted exclusive clientele is expected to spend quite a bit more than on the conventional bottle of water from the supermarket. "This is a high-end niche product,” comments Paul Corriveau, the Canadian entrepreneur and owner of the company.
The idea may be simple, yet the production is complex and costly: to eventually bottle the icebergs, Corriveau sends out a special boat designed to get much closer to the icebergs than any other vessel. The crew on board harvests the ice using a shovel that has been mounted to the boat. The ice is subsequently allowed to melt and bottled on land. To date, the Canadians are scratching off icebergs primarily alongside their own coastline and in Newfoundland; however, the company has already acquired harvesting rights for Europe: soon they will also begin to tackle Greenland’s glaciers.
Right now, Greenland still has more than enough ice: not even 20 percent of the autonomous island, which is part of Denmark, has actually emerged from the ice. However, more and more green spots can be found: as the climate change progresses, 240 cubic kilometers melt each and every year – and the numbers are rising.
So why not bottle Greenland’s previously eternal ice if it is dripping away anyhow? Moreover, the licensing fees the harvesting companies will have to pay to Greenland are certainly a welcome source of income for the local government. For instance, with its 2001 "Ice and Water Exploration Act," Greenland has enacted a law that aims at the promotion of exports of ice and water harvested in Greenland. In 2005, it launched a comprehensive program with the objective of luring potential investors.
Nevertheless, the latter plan is not working out so well: on its website, the government lists a mere three businesses who have acquired licenses for harvesting. The license is granted for a period of 20 years. The Canadians, who have recently joined the group, bring the total to four. A brewery, which used glacier water to brew its beer, filed for bankruptcy early this year.
To date, none of the ice harvesting operations report a boom in their international business. Water from Greenland still is being largely consumed by the people who actually live in Greenland. The market leader in the island’s water market, Swiss enterprise Greenland Springwater, has been holding exclusive harvesting rights for a source on the island of Disko off the western shoreline of Greenland.
A bottling plant, which could fill up to 35 million bottles a year, has just been installed. However, to date much of the capacity is redundant. At this time, approximately half a million bottles come off the line. "Internationally, the business still has a way to go," contends Managing Director Clemens Hauser, who has been in charge of the brand since April 1, 2010.
The beverage marketed under the name 938 has a pH rating of nine, which could potentially be a record value, is currently only listed with a few small retailers in Switzerland. Accordingly, the product is targeting especially consumers committed to eating anti-acidic diets. However, the product still lacks EU approval.
Those committed to exporting water from Greenland find themselves confronted with numerous obstacles. For instance, it is a fact that many of the access routes on the island are only open about 40 weeks of the year. Moreover, Greenland is not a member of the EU, because the government decided to abandon its membership of what was then the EC in 1982, because it wanted to bypass the fishing quotas that were imposed upon the fishing trade at the time. Consequently, the water producers are now required to pay customs duties on any merchandise they want to sell in the EU.
Hence, the producers are now between a rock and a hard place: Health and environmentally conscious consumers who purchase high quality bottled water prefer to buy it in glass bottles. However, given that customs duties are calculated on the basis of weight, the price of these exports would increase to exorbitant levels. As a result, Greenland Springwater uses PET bottles.
One way around this problem would be to bottle abroad. This will not work, though: "A wellness drink always has to be bottled at the source – that’s what the customer expects," explains Hauser. So the plastic bottle is the only solution available – and it comes with the inherent risk of producing something that does not fit the customer’s profile.
Another unresolved issue the few water producers in Greenland have to tackle: sales to Germany. While it is a lucrative market, it is definitely highly saturated and a challenge to develop. Consequently, all of the harvesters have merely made announcements that they will soon offer their beverages in Germany. Any German who wants a taste of Greenland’s glaciers can resort only to one option: travel to Greenland and bring your own ice pick. (bmg)
