Vittel Buys Bartlett, Will Sell Bottled Water in U.S.

Vittel, a 131-year-old French firm and a giant in the European mineral-water market, has announced plans to tap into the competitive U.S. bottled-water business with a new acquisition--the historic Bartlett Springs in Northern California.

A spokesman for the company said Vittel paid $1 million for the 1,600-acre site. The Bartlett Springs spa, which is located north of California’s Wine Country in Lake County, was bought from a group of five individuals including Art Betts of Northern California.

The company’s spokesman in Los Angeles said that Vittel-Bartlett Springs Mineral Water, a non-carbonated water, will make its U.S. debut in about nine months and will compete with such imported waters as Perrier and Evian and American products such as Calistoga and Poland Springs.

“Initially, the water will be marketed in the Western United States,” said Jerry Digney, a spokesman for Vittel, who noted that there are now 400 mostly regional U.S. companies that sell some form of bottled water, in addition to 35 European imports.

“If they meet all of their (financial) objectives, there is a possibility of expanding it to a larger marketplace.” He added that the mineral water will be “in the medium price range.” A survey commissioned by the Virginia-based International Bottled Water Assn. indicated that bottled-water consumption is on the rise in the United States with 934 million gallons of sparkling and non-sparkling water consumed in 1983, an increase of 14% from the year before.

The company, which also operates a spa-resort in Vittel, France, claims to rank as the world’s premier bottler of non-carbonated mineral waters, having sold more than 600 million bottles in 1984.

Located about 150 miles north of San Francisco, the site was chosen over hundreds of other natural water sources throughout the country because of its “natural element content . . . physical location and well-documented history,” the company said.