The world number one in mineral water Nestlé Waters informed the French authorities in 2021 that it had used prohibited ultraviolet treatments and activated carbon filters on some of its mineral waters to maintain “their food safety”, he told AFP on Monday, confirming information from Les Échos.
Even if these treatments “have always aimed to guarantee food safety”, they “led the company to lose sight of the issue of regulatory compliance”, explained Nestlé Waters to AFP.
The brands concerned – Perrier, Vittel, Hépar and Contrex -, all owned by Nestlé, are now “fully compliant with the regulatory framework applicable in France”, assures the company, which says it has abandoned the prohibited treatments over the last three years.
Resulting from a European directive, the regulations prohibit any disinfection of mineral waters which must naturally be of high microbiological quality, unlike tap water which is disinfected before becoming drinkable.
A regulation whose interpretation excludes the ultraviolet treatments and activated carbon filters used by Nestlé Waters.
But the company justifies the use of these techniques by “changes in the environment around its sources, which can sometimes make it difficult to maintain the stability of the essential characteristics” of its waters, in other words their absence of pollution.
“Different chemical or microbiological elements”, which accumulate when “water passes through groundwater or through its path in the factory pipes” required the use of these filters, says Muriel Lienau, president of Nestlé France, in an interview with AFP.
These practices were a “heritage of the past”, judge Muriel Lienau, who says she cannot precisely date their introduction.
Closed wells
Nestlé Waters decided in 2021 to inform the health authorities of their use of these filtration techniques.
The authorities confirmed to him that ultraviolet light and activated carbon could be interpreted as disinfection, unlike the microfiltration that Nestlé continues to use.
In agreement with the authorities, the company put an end to these treatments, forcing it to close four of its wells in the Vosges which could not guarantee the expected level of food safety.
The closed wells, linked to the Hépar and Contrex brands, were particularly sensitive to climatic hazards. “After major droughts, heavy rains disturbed them,” explains Muriel Lienau.
These closures led to a division of Hépar’s production by two.
Concerning Perrier, Nestlé had to reallocate some of the wells in Gard towards the production of a new brand of flavored waters and energy drinks, Maison Perrier, which is therefore not subject to regulations on mineral waters.
Social plans
The cessation of the incriminated treatments, concomitant with the end of the marketing of the Vittel brand in Germany, also motivated the group to launch a social plan in the Vosges, resulting in the elimination of 171 positions, without dismissal according to an agreement in November with the unions.
“We didn’t know it, but it doesn’t surprise us that they were forced to filter this water to keep its composition [minérale] which must be stable,” reacted to AFP Bernard Schmitt, a former doctor, member of the “Eau 88” collective, which is fighting against what its members consider to be overexploitation by Nestlé of local water tables.
“It’s a company that does what it wants and no one has the means to control what it does,” he criticized. “For me, there is more than a failure of controls, there is an abandonment […] of the State, of successive powers” for years, he further estimated.