Nestle

In the Swabian dialect, “Nestle” is a small bird’s nest.

So says the Wiki for Henri Nestle.  I was reading about Nestle because I was trying to learn who owns the spring sources for the major bottled waters in the United States.

Here are our popular waters, by sales in billions of $$:

Dasani and Aquafina are literally just purified municipal tap water with salt added:

Dasani uses tap water from local municipal water supplies, filters it using the process of reverse osmosis, and adds trace amounts of minerals, including magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), potassium chloride and table salt (sodium chloride).

Nestle Pure Life as I understand it comes from springs in Canada:

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 botted on-site in Hope, British Columbia. In the United States, Nestlé Pure Life is a purified (filtered) water.

Next is Poland Spring, owned by Nestle.  Vitaminwater I don’t care about.

and:

Fiji water is owned by David Brooks’ buddies:

How about local SoCal water sources, like Arrowhead?:

Nestle again!

Here’s an interesting one: Crystal Geyser, the source of which is up on the 395, in bleak country near the Owens Lake, source of LA tap water:

The owner there is:

We had to check in with Anonymous Investor on that one:

I never heard of Otsuka before, but just browsed through their 2015 annual report.

Lots of interesting stuff here.  Most of their business (67%) is pharmaceuticals. And the lion’s share of that came from Abilify.  When Abilify went generic in 2015, their earnings dropped off a cliff, although they still managed to stay profitable.

Crystal Geyser is a tiny sliver of their business.  It’s part of their “consumer products” segment. An honor it shares with “Bon Curry,” a line of instant curries–

http://www.amazon.com/Bon-Curry-Gold-180g-pieces/dp/B00BXW9SAM

–and a Gatorade knockoff called “Match”.

http://www.amazon.com/Otsuka-Foods-MATCH-1-5LPETX8-pieces/dp/B010S5VRNK

All together, the consumer products division comprises only 2.8% of the company’s total sales.

So if you buy the stock, what you are getting is mostly the drug business.

Anyway.  If you wish to own fresh springs, the way to do it seems to be to buy Nestle stock, as Joshua Kennon enthusiastically advises.  Nestle also owns Perrier, whose slim cans I’m getting into.

You should never buy a stock though without looking at a picture of the company’s CEO.  What do we think of Paul Bulcke?

On August 30, 2012, Bulcke claimed that water is not a human right and should be privatized. He was quoted as saying “”If something isn’t given a value, people tend to waste it. Water is our most useful resource, but those using it often don’t even cover the costs of its infrastructure. Fresh water is being massively overused at nature’s expense, but it seems only a global crisis will make us realise the importance of the issue. What is environmentally unsustainable today will become socially unsustainable in the future,

(hmm, that quote is sourced on wiki to this article:

but I don’t see it).

File this under our ongoing interest in “sources.”