Coca-Cola pulls Dasani from UK market

Financial Times ^ | 3-19-04 | Adam Jones in London, Jo Johnson in Paris and Betty Liu in Atlanta

[Indy Pendance]

Coca-Cola, which was damaged by a contamination scare five years ago, was forced to withdraw its Dasani bottled water brand from the UK on Friday after discovering it contained illegal levels of a chemical that could increase the risk of cancer.

The embarrassing voluntary recall brought back painful memories of 1999, when several Belgian children fell ill after drinking contaminated Coke, prompting a widespread recall of the soft drink across Europe and a public relations nightmare for the company.

The slow and impersonal response to the crisis by Douglas Ivester, Coca-Cola's chief executive, was one reason for his departure from the company later that year.

Dasani's UK debut at the end of January had already been turbulent. Coca-Cola was pilloried for using tap water instead of a natural spring as the source, even though Dasani did not claim to be a mineral water.

Dasani, which has been sold in the US for the past five years, is essentially tap water that has been treated and bottled.

Coca-Cola had claimed it was able to improve the purity of tap water through a process perfected by Nasa, the US space agency, before adding "a perfect balance of minerals".

But on Friday the drinks company admitted the much-vaunted manufacturing process had accidentally introduced illegal levels of bromate, a chemical that could cause an increased risk of cancer after long-term exposure.

The Food Standards Agency, which regulates food safety in the UK, said there was no immediate risk to public health.

Thames Water, the UK utility that supplied the tap water to the Dasani plant near London, was on Friday put in the bizarre position of having to reassure its domestic customers that their mains water was safe to drink.

Thames tap water sells for 0.03p for a half-litre. It cost up to 95p ($1.74) for the same amount of Dasani.

Analysts at JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley both questioned the viability of the company's plan to launch Dasani in other European countries. But Coca-Cola still plans to launch Dasani on April 19 in France, the most sophisticated bottled water market in the world. The Dasani to be sold in France is a genuine mineral water.

Paul Gordon, president of Coca-Cola France, said: "The arrival of Coca-Cola in the bottled water market in France is as important to the company as the launch of Coca-Cola light [as Diet Coke is known] in 1988."

[GeronL]

Nonesense. I'd take triple-purified water (Deja Blue) over water from out of the ground anyday

[ApplegateRanch]

My deep well (970') in limestone formations is just fine, thank you. Baring that, I can get $0.59/gal reverse-osmosis into my own containers at any of the loccal markets.

I grew up drinking from streams while hunting or fishing; using a spring fed reservoir; using well water; in some winter power outages, snow melt; and, when forced, city water. Only the city crud ever gave any problems.

I've drank some of tha bottled stuff when there wasn't anything else around, and it is just plain blah-yuk.

[GeronL]

I wouldn't want to drink downstream from a hred of cattle ot campers =o)

[jonno]

reverse-osmosis

I like the idea of RO - nothing but H20.

I've put RO systems in the last 2 houses I've owned. The startup cost is not cheap (~$200 on up), but the convenience is worth it. I've got RO "on tap" for drinking, cooking, house-plants, and the ice-maker.

I'm not advertising, but I found BigBrandWaterFilter.com a decent source for RO.

FYI - The last one I put in was the HL-5000

[ApplegateRanch]

I wouldn't want to drink downstream from a hred of cattle ot campers =o)

It builds character.:)

Like anything else, "Know your surroundings"! A lot of the places I had in mind are now either resorts or subdivisions, and whatever 'stream' is left is confined to a drainage ditch.

As a related thing, in 1971 while working in the Bechtel slurry lab, we ran tests on both San Francisco sewerage & water. The tap water had much higher levels of suspended solids. Naturally, that has nothing to do with pathogenic properties, but....

[GeronL]

water from 970 feet down has been filtered by 970 feet of ground, I suppose... =o)

[ApplegateRanch]

water from 970 feet down has been filtered by 970 feet of ground

Actually, no. The aquifer is beneath impervious layers. It is filtered by about 40-50 miles of rock, between the well site, and the recharge zone.

The tilt of the beds means that the cap is missing in the recharge area; not that the aquifer layer itself is exposed.

First, the surface water has to percolate down to the aquifer, doing a first-filtration.

Next it spends several years slowly moving, mainly by osmotic pressure, through the miles of fine-grained filtration to the well site.

A few PPM of dissolved minerals, but that's it. The bacteria of surface water rarely get past the first 10-20 feet of surface & sub soils.

[GeronL]

do I have to pay for that lesson Professor? =o)

[ApplegateRanch]

No; that is the free teaser.

You can, however, sign up for my web-based series of lectures, each more expensive than the last, to cover the costs of the ever more impressive, though useless, suitable for framing, "diplomas" an "certificates".

We also offer 'discounts' on the vanity-published texts that are required and available nowhere else.

To keep our costs down, we cut out the middlemen, and accredit ourselves.

In order for us to calculate your tuition, please submit certified copies of your U.S. tax returns for the previous five years.

[GeronL]

lol.

Those kinds of places are all online these days aren't they?

Welcome to Cormell University! Your $500 diploma is weeks away.

[GeronL]

Please, do not confuse Cormell University with Havyard or Yeild Universities.

[GeronL]

Anyways, it brings to mind the question of what people do when they have a masters in Gay Liberation Theology in the Marxist Dialectic.

[ApplegateRanch]

(what do people do with) a masters in Gay Liberation Theology in the Marxist Dialectic.

Use it as a basis to sell tinfoil, while getting a Doctorate of Demonolgy (DD) and then seeking ordination in the Unitarian Universalist Trinitron ministry?

[GeronL]

lol.