It has no flavour, no smell and it costs like the black gold. Russia is going to seriously engage in fresh water supplies. This idea was set forth by United Russia’s leader Boris Gryzlov.
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During the IX party convention he stated: “Russia is going to enter new markets. Taking into consideration Russia’s water storage, it is indispensable to develop the export of drinking water, since in five years or so water will be another strategic product for the nation,” Interfax reports.
“All jokes aside, Russian fresh water supplies may equal oil and gas supplies,” Vadim Altaev, the Vice President of the Union of Bottled Water Manufacturers, said in an interview with Bigness.ru. “Specialists from many countries forecast that water will become number one product in the foreseeable future. We can dispense with oil, but we cannot dispense with water. Russia has one of the world’s greatest fresh water reserves,” he stated proudly.
According to Altaev, there are numerous fresh water resources in Russia: in the north, in the Arctic Ocean, in the south and in Siberia.
Alexander Stavtsev, editor-in-chief of Napitki (Beverages) magazine, shared his view. ”We have wonderful Lake Baikal with outstanding properties and amazing water that is extracted from depths of the lake,” he said.
However, he does not back up officials’ ambitions in this issue. It will be too difficult to conquer the world. ”First of all, fine water can be found practically everywhere nowadays. Secondly, if in some countries water is of poor quality, it can be purified and filtered, even in draughty Africa. By the way, the purifying equipment of Russian and Ukrainian production is a best-seller there,” Stavtsev particularly mentioned.
It will not be an easy task for bottled water manufacturers to break into the market. “Market penetration is an art,” he said. However, the expert could not say whether Russia was too late to come into the market.
He just said that several well-known trademarks already hold the market in their hands and Russia is not at the top of the list. It is premium class bottled water that can be exported, which stipulated glass, but not plastic bottles. “There is not much Russian premium class water,” he said.
“It is hard to sell Baikal water even in Moscow, to say nothing of other countries,” Stavtsev said. “Shall we export bottled water to China and Africa? I don’t think so. It requires serious marketing,” the editor-in-chief of Napitki magazine believes.
He said nothing about exporting water in cisterns or tubes like oil and whether water will become a strategic resource indeed.
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