The Sant Aniol water company, located in La Garrotxa, wants to expand to the Middle East in 2023, strengthening some of the exports that the company already has in Japan, the United States or the United Kingdom. The general director of the Girona company, Andreu Galindo, has remarked that they are forging contacts with distributors in these countries.
Galindo points out that approximately 10% of the 52 million liters of water they produce annually are sent to other parts of the world, especially in the field of restaurants and hotels. This year, Sant Aniol celebrates 30 years and does so with a turnover of 10 million euros.
In 2022, the Sant Aniol de Finestres-based water bottling company produced 52 million liters of water. Two thirds of these bottles went to the hotel industry, where Sant Aniol has a strong presence. In fact, for years this brand has decided to strengthen itself in restaurants due to the quality that the water offers, since it is the only one in the entire Iberian Peninsula that has a volcanic origin.
Galindo explained that the hotel and catering industry is a strategic sector, but that they also do not want to neglect home sales, since it represents 40% of the sales volume. Even so, the hospitality market is especially important because the majority of sales are glass bottles and it allows them to apply another of the company’s strategic lines: sustainability.
Galindo recalled that Sant Aniol has a large volume of returnable bottles. When they arrive at the plant, they are cleaned and refilled with water and distributed again to the stores.
Galindo recalled that it is “rare” for a water brand to sell to almost 30 countries, since it is usually a local resource and there is no market to sell water abroad. Despite this, the fact that Sant Aniol extracts the filtered water from the volcanoes in La Garrotxa gives it “highly valued†properties around the world and allows the water to be positioned in different high-end restaurants. from different parts of the world.
The director has remarked that some of the most important markets are the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and South Korea. In addition, for a few years they have begun to export to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Now, Sant Aniol is launching an “expansion strategy” that involves strengthening the Middle Eastern market.
To do so, the brand considers it necessary to value “the ‘premium’ water feature”, which will be one of the challenges that Galindo sets for this year. In this sense, he believes that the company should strengthen the brand based on the characteristics that volcanic water offers.
On the other hand, the company has guaranteed the production of bottled water for the coming years despite the drought. Andreu Galindo recalled that the water collected by Sant Aniol is “of a long cycle and has been around for years”. Although the company has reduced water consumption by 5% due to the pre-alert state due to drought, the general director assures that the lack of rain will not affect the 52 million liters of water they have in production.
In parallel to the drought, Sant Aniol also faces increases in the price of the energy used by the plant. “We are receiving impacts on costs that we have to carefully transfer to prices,” adds Andreu Galindo. The director is confident that the rise in energy prices will stop, but regrets that “from an incomparable base” with other years.
Within the sustainable aspect, Sant Aniol has begun to distribute a new plastic bottle. The brand has taken the opportunity to update the packaging design, but it is a “lighter bottle with less plastic”, which makes it “more sustainable”.
