Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé Waters North America, Kim Jeffery (left) and Poland Spring plant manager Cameron Loraine (right) and stand outside the Kingfield plant earlier last month. (David Hart photo) KINGFIELD — Kim Jeffery, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nestlé Waters North America Inc. based in Greenwich, Conn., oversees the largest bottled water company in North America with 9,000 employees, 27 plants and more than 100 facilities.

Last month, Jeffery visited NWNA’s Poland Spring plant in Kingfield and met with employees and local media.

In an interview, he talked about a wide array of topics ranging from the company’s success to water resource management and answered questions from opposing viewpoints. water company in America. With sales of more than $4.2 billion in 2007, the company holds seven of the top 10 U.S. brands and is also the leading bottled water company in Canada.

Jeffrey said they purchased Poland Spring because it was well known; it has a strong brand being exclusively from Maine since 1845.

“I find it somewhat interesting to me today that we have some people who think we should not be doing this, but we’ve been doing this for 150 years. I think we predate lots of businesses in Maine,” he said.

When they purchased Poland Spring, he said, they were bankrupt doing about $3 million in revenue a year and it’s a billion dollar business today. Poland Spring is NWNA’s best corporate producer with expected growth ahead, Jeffery said.

“Maine is quite unusual,” Jeffery explained. “Glacial till has created this medium of sand as a filter so it emanates from the ground with very low minerals and tastes great. It’s our best tasting spring water in the United States,” he explained.

Jeffery said sales are up eight percent this year, leading the beverage category in growth. All other beverages with the exception of tea are down.

Jeffery provided three reasons for his company’s success. They saw the need for bottled water well before anyone else and stuck with it. They purchased great brands with long histories of success. The third reason for the company success in water bottling is the people who work for them. “We have great, hardworking people who have great values and are good to us. Our people are proud to work here, the quality of our people is better, the commitment of those people is better.”

Currently Poland Spring employs 800 people in Maine with an annual payroll of $35 million.

The Kingfield facility is not currently producing its full two-line capacity and the two nearby springs in Dallas and Pierce Pond are being held in reserve. Jeffery predicted that it would be a couple or years before any additional lines would be installed for greater production.

Jeffery went onto explain specific concerns they hear from opposition such as controlling and consuming too much of the available water resources and environmental concerns over the manufacturing of PET bottles.

“Water in its macro sense is very interesting,” Jeffery said. About 70 percent of the water used today is for agriculture, 20 percent for industry and 10 percent for human household usage. Only less than one percent gets ingested by humans, he said.

Jeffrey said that Maine will never have a problem with water for any of these purposes because it’s one of the most water rich states in the nation, the least populated and has eight inches of rainfall yearly. Places like California are in trouble, he said, where agriculture and green civilizations are being created on deserts using diverted water from other areas.

“Still, I would say if you’re going to attack the issue of water, you have to address industrial pollution and agricultural use of water. We don’t have good water resource management techniques in the United States when looking at water in the macro sense.

“If I come back to a company like ours, we are using 1/100 of one percent of potable water that’s used everyday in America. It’s a really small amount.”

Maine has a good framework of laws controlling water usage, Jeffery said, the rest of the country needs to follow.

Municipal water supply is at a deficit right now and filtration and bottled water industries are expected to be on the rise.

Some people who are opposed to the company suggest they compete against tap water being cheaper, better or more environmentally sound, Jeffery explained.

“I’m not going to say if it is or it isn’t. I’m just going to say that if I look over the past 15 years, 70 percent of our growth has come from other packaged beverages, mostly soft drinks.”

“Globally water is a big problem in the next 40 years,” he said. “The population is going to double. We don’t have enough crops to feed them; we don’t have enough water to grow the crops if we don’t use it wisely. So if I look at it globally, water is a big issue. It’s a bigger issue than climate.”

Jeffery was asked if Nestlé was looking to position itself to create rights to water for supply and profit in the global demand for water. “No, we have no interest in acquiring large water supplies for anything more than what we need to make our products,” Jeffrey explained. Currently NWNA owns 14,000 acres of land for water harvesting.

Jeffery spoke of the criticism generated by the use of petroleum based PET bottles, and why some say if the company went away or people switched to 100 percent tap water, our landfill demands and petroleum dependency will lessen.

The CEO explained that their bottles are the thinnest in the industry and represent less then 10 percent of the total PET containers in the beverage industry.

“If we were not in business, then 90 percent would still be there in just the beverage industry alone and does not include all of the other plastic packaging used in America for other food and non food items.”

Jeffery said we need to do a better job with recycling in America and we need to get all plastics back for recycling. “People can be in favor of banning our industry, but it’s not going to solve any environmental problems. And from my perspective it’s going to take a healthy beverage off the market that people can drink everyday.”

In some states, such as Maine, redemption laws allow for 90 percent of the plastic beverage containers to return as a form of recycling.

“When we get better at recycling, there’s going to be a big market and we’re all going to feel better about what we are doing. We have to get some of this product back into the goods and services industry and recycle it back to virgin resin.”

Currently, Jeffery said, NWNA is looking at working with a German company to revolutionize plastic recycling on the east coast. Their hope is to try to capture a high percentage of the commodity and manufacture it back to virgin resin. If this is possible, the concerns of PET production and landfills debate could someday go away, Jeffery explained.