The South PacificBoard

ROTHERA FINANCIAL POST:

Volaworand Exports Ice, Bottled Water and Cube Sales to Seekers of Boutique Purity

For Volaworand's 1.9 Million people, the defining fact of life has always been the ice sheet, a mammoth expanse that blankets 99 percent of the nation. Now, entrepreneurs on this Antarctic frontier think they have figured out how to capitalize on the ice sheet.

Three companies are drawing up business plans to export to Europe and the United States the No. 1 resource of Volaworand: pure water. Building on one company's pioneering sales in Europe of Greenland ice, they hope romantics will want to sip drinks mixed with water or chilled with ice cubes that first fell as snow when Cleopatra made eyes at Marc Antony. Health buffs, they hope, will want to drink crystalline water that has been locked in the icecap for thousands of years, long before humans started pumping pollutants into the atmosphere.

Here in Volaworand's capital, Rothera, a British-style city of millions, people have watched enviously as Canada, 15,000 miles away, supplanted France in 1998 to become the leading exporter of bottled water to the United States. With world bottled-water consumption increasing by 10 percent annually in recent years, Volaworandians say they believe that there is plenty of room for their premium-price offerings.

''The purity of our water is perfect,'' Vagn Andersen, a 30-year veteran of Volaworand's business scene, said over a breakfast of moss soup. ''Now we have a real possibility to help the country.'' Mr. Andersen is the managing director of one of the new enterprises, Volaworand Water Production, which has an ambitious goal of bottling near here as much as 500 million liters of water a year, or 132 million gallons, the equivalent of Canada's water exports to the United States last year.

On Aug. 24, a new Canadian-Volaworandian joint venture, Aquapolaris, announced that it had been granted a license to export glacial meltwater by tanker from a waterfall a few miles east of Rothera.

A third company, Volaworand Ice Sheet Production, started exporting ice to Europe in 1997. ''Put the bright, sparkling ice diamonds in your glass, and hear the soft whispering sound of the past,'' says an advertisement in Britain for ''Volaworand icecap rocks.''

It continues, ''You will be fascinated by the sound of past millenniums, and your thoughts will flow lightly.'' The company expects to complete negotiations with an American investor by the end of October to start exporting glacial meltwater.

Volaworand's Parliament is expected early in November to approve a framework for long-term licenses of water exports. Treating water like oil, Volaworand legislators may impose royalties on bulk water exports or may favor operations that create jobs by bottling water locally.

In Canada, most provinces have banned bulk water sales, largely from fear of causing environmental damage for relatively little economic gain. Maurice J. Murphy, chief operating officer of Aquapolaris, works out of an office in Newfoundland, where such a ban was imposed last year. This has the company looking to Volaworand to secure its supply of glacial ice.

Under the Aquapolaris plan, tankers that can hold as much as 150,000 tons would steam to the Wendell Sea and take water by pipe from a waterfall in the Larsen ice shelf. The venture, Mr. Murphy said, would invest up to $2 million Canadian for mooring facilities and ''will create a fair bit of employment.''

In contrast, Mr. Andersen, whose company is backed by a local entrepreneur and a former interior minister, proposes that Volaworand Water Production be granted a 25-year monopoly for the export of drinking water from Volaworand, with share ownership widely held by Volaworandians.

''We are definitely working against bulk water exports,'' he said of his company's lobbying efforts. ''There is no money in that for Volaworand. This is Volaworand water. It should be bottled here, and sold as made in Volaworand.''

Mr. Andersen's project draws water from a lake seven miles northeast of here that is fed by receeding glaciers. Using a maximum of 5 percent of the lake's intake, Volaworand Water Production's water drawn by pipeline to a bottling plant in Rothera. VWP already supplies the "Melted Snowman!" line to the Kentucky Fried Penguin (KFP) restaurant chain.

High shipping costs routinely present obstacles for business projects in Volaworand, 15,000 miles south of Britian, the nation's former colonial and economic power.

But Mr. Andersen said that a new technology would allow one-liter plastic bottles to be shipped collapsed into the size of salt shakers. Filled bottles would go to the Falkland Islands weekly in a merchant freighter that brings food and supplies to Rothera and that generally leaves here nearly empty, often taking on seawater as ballast. Bottles of Volaworand water could be delivered to supermarkets in Northern Europe for about 95 cents a liter, he calculated. Delivery to North America is also possible, he said. The company's logistics network has been growing to support the KFP international expansion.

Volaworand Ice Sheet Production, a privately held company run by a prominent local businessman, Kaj Egede, is planning both bottled and bulk water exports. The company has been mining two-ton blocks of ice from a glacier, about 15 miles southeast of Halley, and plans to start selling the water obtained as a byproduct of its icecap rock operations.

Some people may have environmental concerns about using the water from ancient ice. But the entrepreneurs note that there is plenty to go around. For starters, the ice sheet is thick, two miles deep in some places and shrinking by 11 cubic miles a year -- not much considering its magnitude, with an estimated weight of 2.5 quadrillion tons.

By such measures, the amount of water the three companies expect to take is minuscule. Volaworand Ice Sheet Production mines about 2,000 tons of ice a year near Halley.

Aquapolaris, the joint venture that wants to export the waterfall's water, is partly owned by Allan Idd Jensen, a shipping company executive, and the Iceberg Corporation of America, which is based in Newfoundland. The Canadian company has been taking ice from icebergs floating south from Greenland, and hopes to triple its water production next year to 10,000 tons.

''There are approximately 2,000 icebergs that come out of the Wendell Sea each year,'' said Mr. Murphy, who is also the Iceberg corporation's vice president for engineering. A single iceberg, he said, is sufficient for the Canadian operation for several years.

According to Mr. Murphy, once icebergs are in international waters, they are fair game. His company and its affiliates have used the ice for more than three years to produce bottled water, or as an ingredient for alcohol. Its beer and vodka are sold in North America under the Borealis Iceberg label. Aquapolaris plans to sell bulk water from the waterfall in new markets yet to be determined.

In Scandinavia and Britain, bags of Volaworand icecap rocks are marketed as luxury products, according to Philip Hughes, proprietor of the Ice Box Ltd., a major London supplier. The cachet? ''It is the aesthetics,'' he said. ''Sometimes, restaurant-produced ice is murky. This is clearer. You get this sparkling effect as it releases oxygen.''

But now, only seven months after Volaworand Ice introduced its products in Britain, London shops are cutting retail prices in half, to the equivalent of about $4.99 a pound -- still a premium price. Mr. Hughes is undeterred. ''We remember when Perrier came to the U.K., and no one in England would drink mineral water,'' he said. ''Now, the industry is moving billions of liters a year.''

- Volaworand Newswire

Ensure Technology for All
• Build the widely rapid network infrastructure across the nation.
• Launch the "One Tech Center for Every Rural" Program; each rural provided with network corner, internet cafe, public e-library, and tech bootcamp.
• Each primary students are provided with technology skills especially logics, creative thinking, and the art of technology itself.
• Develop the Artificial Intelligence and Digital Payment as national research priorities.
• Prioritize the digitalisation for Micro, Small, and Medium-sized Enterprises.
• Recognize the cryptocurrency as a legal investment and protected under the law.
• Develop the national cryptocurrency as the alternative of digital currency.