BlueTriton Brands Inc., formerly owned by Nestle SA, sells Poland Spring, Pure Life, Canadian Springs and other water brands that collectively hold roughly 14 per cent of the Canadian market.ROBERT F. BUKATY/The Canadian Press
Canada’s biggest bottled-water producer has not yet revealed why it is pulling out of Ontario ahead of its permit renewal, though water activists are hailing the abrupt retreat as the culmination of nearly 20 years of protest.
BlueTriton Brands Inc., formerly owned by Nestle SA, sells Poland Spring, Pure Life, Canadian Springs and other water brands that collectively hold roughly 14 per cent of the Canadian market. It announced last week that it will wind down its Ontario operations by the end of January and sell a Guelph-area bottling plant that has been a lightning-rod for advocates who say aquifers shouldn’t be drained for corporate profit.
The producer disclosed the sell-off the same day it finalized a merger with Primo Water, a Florida-based water provider. The company has not responded to multiple interview requests. In a statement, spokesperson Carrie Ratner said the merger had nothing to do with the Ontario closing and called the decision, which will affect nearly 200 employees, “difficult.”
Two recent filings with the provincial lobbyist registry suggest BlueTriton was struggling with the province’s new Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) program requiring companies to pay for the recycling programs that handle their packaging. The company employed lobbyists to sway Queen’s Park on the issue on Oct. 1 and Oct. 10, according to the registry.
“Since the switch to an EPR system, BlueTriton’s recycling costs have increased drastically since 2022,” the registry entry states.
Ted Arnott, MPP for Wellington-Halton Hills, the riding where BlueTriton is located, said he doesn’t recall the company raising the EPR issue with him and remains in favour of “a strong regulatory framework on water bottling facilities to ensure that companies are adhering to their permit to take water and not depleting the aquifer that all of us care about in our communities.”
BlueTriton extracts the bulk of its water in the region from well TW3-80, known as the Aberfoyle Spring. A provincial permit allows the withdrawal of 3.6 million litres a day. Last year, it pulled a total of 639 million litres from the well, or about 256 Olympic swimming pools.
The permit is up for renewal in 2026. Wellington Water Watchers, a local group formed in 2007 to oppose Nestle’s water-bottling operations, was gearing up to challenge the renewal.
“We’re glad they’re leaving, but we are going to stay diligent until this whole operation is wrapped up,” said Arlene Slocombe, the group’s executive director.
Since its formation, Wellington Water Watchers has allied with First Nations and advocacy groups such as the Council of Canadians in their quest to shut down the operation.
In 2016, their pressure – along with Nestle’s controversial decision to outbid a small municipality for a well – spurred the governing Ontario Liberals to impose a moratorium on permits for new or expanded bottling operations. The province subsequently increased the commercial rate for groundwater extraction to $503.71 per million litres from $3.71 per million litres.
In 2021, Nestle sold its North American water business to two private equity companies that created BlueTriton, a deal struck as Canada’s thirst for bottled water was levelling off after two decades of torrid growth. An IBISWorld report on Canadian bottled water production rates the industry’s revenue expectations as “stagnant” and shows BlueTriton’s market share plummeting to 13.8 per cent from 27.3 per cent since 2019.
“We anticipated they’d be shedding their least profitable or most problematic parts, and I think that’s what’s happening here,” Ms. Slocombe said.
Even so, BlueTriton showed few outward signs of wanting to divest from the Guelph area. It applied for, and received, a permit renewal for the Aberfoyle Spring in 2021 and continued to employ nearly 200 people.
On Oct. 11, the Ontario Hockey League’s Guelph Storm hosted BlueTriton Night where every ticket holder received a free bottle of Pure Life water. In a press release for the event, BlueTriton Brands Canada president Scott McIntyre said the company was committed “to the families and community in the Guelph Area.”
The departure leaves a hole in municipal tax revenues and the local job market, said James Seeley, Mayor of the surrounding Township of Puslinch.
“It’s very disappointing that people from outside our community rallied to protest this good corporate citizen that provided for charity and now potentially cost 200 jobs when this is a renewable resource,” he said, noting that the company is Wellington County’s third-highest taxpayer, with annual bills of about $900,000.
But that idea of freshwater as renewable resource is under increasing scrutiny in Canada and around the world. Sixty-four per cent of the country is currently classified as abnormally dry or in drought. The United Nations has declared that climate change has fundamentally disrupted the water cycle and that worldwide demand for freshwater will outstrip supply by 40 per cent in six years.
“We have what I call a myth of abundance in Canada,” said Maude Barlow, co-founder of the Council of Canadians and author of several books on water. “We’ve lived with this notion that we have so much water we can do anything we want with it.
“It’s just not true. We do not have water to spare.”