TEN THINGS THAT CAUGHT MY EYE IN ITALY

We’ve just held our first Italian mineral water industry conference in Naples. The driving was fast, the food slow, the dialogue animated and the insights fascinating. I saw and learned many new things. Here are ten.

• At the entrance to the spacious Ferrarelle plant was a field of solar panels, which generate 15% of the site’s power.
• There, I was able to drink a naturally sparkling water direct from the source.
• At one borehole, the natural pressure is so strong that it sends up a spout of water 20 metres high.
• San Benedetto has discovered that almost 60% of its carbon footprint comes from the production and transport of raw materials, mainly plastic, compared with under 20% for production or for transporting finished product.
• Its 1 litre Easy bottle has a fully verified carbon offset programme.
• Nestlé’s Levissima brand now uses 25% recycled PET for its 1 litre bottle.
• Krones introduced a series of innovations including an extraordinarily light 3.5 gram six pack carrier that requires far less material than any shrink wrap.
• It was suggested that 50cl bottles of still water could soon use as little as 8 grams of PET.
• The cost of obesity in the United States has been put at $147 billion a year.
• It felt as if Naples was home to the original shot drink – its tiny espresso coffees are known as ‘ristretto’.

The highlight for me, though, was chairing a two hour discussion between four of the industry’s top chief executives and the President of the country’s leading retailer Coop Italia. What made it even more interesting was a national media campaign by Coop Italia in support of tap water. Yet they were all charming throughout. I should add a footnote about a fascinating 200km per hour journey with three of the chief executives. I did wonder for a moment about the fate of half the entire industry in one car.