You can ask for a bottle of Evian or San Pellegrino at Singapore’s three-Michelin-starred Restaurant Zen.
But you will not get one.
The restaurant, which expenses almost $500 per individual for dinner, solely serves water from the Swedish firm Nordaq, mentioned Executive Chef Martin Öfner.
Dishes and drinks on the restaurant are comprised of the water too, from its shares to the juices in its non-alcoholic beverage pairing, he mentioned.
Zen is considered one of greater than 140 Michelin-starred eating places that serve Nordaq water, firm CEO Johanna Mattsson informed CNBC Travel. The water, which is purified and bottled on-site utilizing native faucet water, can also be current in additional than 700 luxurious resorts, casinos and cruise ships, she mentioned.
The firm goals to cut back single-use water bottles within the hospitality trade — each a budget plastic selection generally present in lodge rooms, to glass-bottled European mineral water served in higher-end eating places. The latter can journey hundreds of miles between its supply to the place it’s in the end consumed.
“Transportation of water over water would not make sense,” mentioned Mattsson. “That’s what we wish to remove.”
Nordaq’s bottles are free from plastic labeling in order that they are often simply washed and reused, and so they include vast mouths in order that they are often cleaned in common dishwashers, she mentioned.
Bottles are additionally securely capped and date-stamped after they’re refilled, mentioned Mattsson.
Mandarin Oriental Singapore has had Nordaq’s water system on faucet since 2023, with bottles current within the lodge’s rooms, eating places, spa and health club.
Hotel Manager Cindy Kong let CNBC Travel tour its bottling facility to see how the bottles are washed, inspected, crammed and sealed. She mentioned the power can produce 500 bottles of purified water in an hour.
“Normally we course of between 1,000 to 2,000 [bottles] each day,” she mentioned.
Nordaq is considered one of many firms within the premium sustainable water enterprise. Castalie water is current in additional than 700 resorts in France, based on its web site, whereas Purezza water is served in additional than 5,000 venues throughout 13 nations, based on the corporate’s LinkedIn web page.
The Indian hospitality firm ITC Hotels created its personal model of “zero-mile” water referred to as SunyaAqua to cut back single-use plastic bottles in its 140 resorts. “Every guilt-free sip is bottled in-house, eliminating the necessity for transport,” New Delhi’s ITC Maurya posted on Facebook in July.
Hospitality firms are the core marketplace for the Swiss sustainable water model Be WTR. It operates inside resorts — with a facility opening quickly in Rosewood Abu Dhabi — and thru centralized amenities.
In the latter, Be WTR’s founder and CEO Mike Hecker mentioned water might journey barely farther than ITC Hotel’s “zero mile” water, however not by a lot.
“We do not wish to transport greater than 10 kilometers round our bottling facility, as a result of, as you nicely know, carbon footprint … is very impacted by transport,” he informed CNBC. “We attempt to be situated on the level of consumption as a lot as we are able to.”
The firm’s predominant operations are within the United Arab Emirates, however the water is bought in 12 nations, together with latest expansions into Canada and China, mentioned Hecker. The firm closed a $44 million spherical of Series C funding in October.
Be WTR could be present in resorts as assorted as Le Bristol Paris, opened in 1925, to The Standard Singapore (right here), which opened almost 100 years later in December 2024.
Source: The Standard, Singapore
Be WTR signed a worldwide settlement with Accor to be a most popular associate for the French hospitality firm’s luxurious lodge manufacturers.
“We are the primary firm to have a worldwide water settlement concentrating on [Accor’s] five-star manufacturers, such because the Raffles, Pullman [and] Sofitel,” he mentioned.
Less waste, greater revenue
Companies that provide the tourism and meals industries with no- or low-transport filtered water say they save tens of millions of plastic bottles from getting used yearly. But they’ve one other promoting level — they will generate a revenue for his or her purchasers too.
Be WTR’s Hecker mentioned its first bottling plant at Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi saved “over a million imported bottles a yr. And this can be a appreciable achievement, each in … carbon footprint, but in addition in creating optimistic revenue for our consumer.”
CNBC’s Travel Editor Monica Pitrelli samples Nordaq water with CEO Johanna Mattsson. A working tally on Nordaq’s web site says the corporate has saved some 5.7 billion plastic bottles from getting used, a statistic primarily based on knowledge extracted from the corporate’s bottling amenities, the corporate mentioned.
Source: Zap PR
Hecker declined to say how a lot a bottle of Be WTR sells for, however mentioned it is “competitively priced” with glass-bottled mineral water from Europe.
Nordaq’s Mattsson says every bottle of its water prices between 11 cents and 21 cents to provide. But the water sells for far more. The Providore Singapore sells free-flow nonetheless and glowing Nordaq water for $2 per individual, however some luxurious resorts cost 4 occasions that worth for a single bottle.
Purezza estimates every of its bottles value round 30 cents to provide, or about one-fifth the value of standard bottled water, based on an organization sales brochure. But each could be bought for a similar worth, based on the brochure, which estimated that 1,000 bottles of Purezza water bought at $5 per bottle may generate $13,200 in annual revenue for the vendor.
