Timchenko's company will produce drinking water under a license from the Russian Orthodox Church. Nestle and Coca-Cola are bidding to buy IDS Borjomi. New owner is Nestle.

Alfa Group, which owns the assets of IDS Borjomi International, announced its plans to sell the company. Coca-Cola and Nestle are bidding to buy it. Both sides have so far remained silent and have not given official confirmation or denial regarding plans to acquire the oldest brand.

At the moment, the value of the international company IDS Borjomi, which includes well-known brands - “Holy Source”, “Borjomi”, “Morshinskaya”, “Mirgorodskaya” - is about five hundred million dollars. The bottled water manufacturer has 9 factories in Russia and Ukraine and occupies a leading position in the markets of the CIS and Baltic countries.

It is not yet clear why Alfa Group decided to sell the assets of a successful company.

Nestle is trying to bring back the Holy Spring again

Interestingly, the “Holy Source” brand once belonged to the Swiss company Nestle. Then, ignorance of the Russian mentality and an incorrect approach to the positioning of water led to a decrease in sales of the product by more than half. Initially, a feature of the marketing policy was that the brand was “blessed” by the Russian Orthodox Church, as the label on the bottle told customers about. The Swiss decided to rebrand: they modernized the design, changed the logo and packaging. The "blessed" label was removed.

But the changes were not to the taste of customers - water sales fell sharply and the market share dropped to 2% instead of the usual 15. Nestle immediately sold the brand to IDS and today, it seems, is planning to buy it again.

The decision is strategically correct: analysts assess the bottled water market as very promising, which will grow annually by an average of 5%, and it would not be a bad idea to add another brand to your beverage portfolio, unless, of course, it gets ahead of Coca-Cola. The sale of IDS Borjomi International will mean big changes for Alfa Group, which also owns shares in the Pyaterochka grocery chains. It will be necessary to reconsider the pricing policy for drinking and mineral water, because you will have to buy it from the new owner, and these are completely different expenses.

« » – this is natural drinking water that is extracted from artesian wells. A careful approach to choosing a source allowed the use of gentle, modern filtration methods that do not change the natural structure of water. This allows you to maintain the optimal content of salts and microelements in the Holy Spring water, preserving all the benefits for humans.

“Holy Source” is the first bottled water on the Russian market, existing for more than 20 years. “Holy Source” is chosen by the majority of Russians who buy bottled water. B 201 5 year "Holy Source" becomes undisputed market leader and remains so today. * Currently, “Holy Source” produces natural bottled water for active people seeking to lead a healthy lifestyle.

“Holy Source” has a wide range for all occasions. Everyone will find a convenient format and volume for themselves: from 0.33 to 19 liters - be it a compact bottle that fits in a woman’s handbag, or a large volume for the whole family. “Holy Source” pays special attention to the water balance of children, releasing a line of water for schoolchildren “Holy Source” Sportik", for babies from the first day of their life “Holy Spring Firefly”, as well as a series of licensed products in collaboration with the company Disney in Russia and other major licensed brands.Bright, unusual packaging helps parentsintroduce your child to a healthy lifestyle from childhood.

“Holy Spring” proves every day that just one healthy habit, maintaining hydration, can change you for the better!

Origin

"Holy Spring" is minedfrom artesian wells, from the Jurassic-Quaternary complex, represented by medium and fine-grained sands, forming a single aquifer at depths of 50 meters.
Water passes through sands formed during the Ice Age. This ensures natural filtration and enrichment of water at the ionic level with microelements, which makes it physiologically complete. Natural water “Holy Source” is physiologically complete and ideal for daily use.

Mineral composition of water "Holy Source"

* - according to Nielsen, 2015 – 2018

The photo shows the most important building of the famous company. It is in this “booth” that the products you encounter almost every day are born. Without knowing what's there, I would assume it's a server room. The Saint Nicholas Chapel, located on the territory of the Kostroma plant, is an equally important part of not only the brand, but even the production process. Pay attention to the barbed wire and 24-hour security guards on duty at the “booth”. I won’t delay answering until the end of the article. Let's take a look inside!
That's basically all that's inside. There was still a red line on the floor, beyond which you could not go without certain disinfection procedures. In front of you is a water intake structure or well pavilion. And the brand is drinking water “Holy Spring”
I have never seen such a regulated enterprise. Here is one hygiene zone, there is another. You can’t get through here without a robe and special boots; there you need to wear a baseball cap. Moreover, under the supervision of a security guard, wash your hands and treat them with a disinfectant solution. And these red lines are everywhere!
It’s strange, but I haven’t noticed such measures at breweries. I remember museums, I remember tastings, I remember bottling lines too. But I can’t remember the red lines and constant changes and treatments. Probably the tasting is to blame.
Visitors are given special shoes. A tank can drive over them without harming the legs. And they give out helmets disguised as baseball caps. I understood why these precautions were needed in the administration building. Answer to photo:
Every year at Epiphany, the source is consecrated in the chapel of St. Nicholas, which you saw above. Why does this procedure need to be carried out every 365 days? Maybe the divine action loses its power over time? Probably 20 years ago, someone describing the technological processes did not bother to call the priest and wrote down in the “Frequency” column: “Once a year.” Water treatment equipment. Bulk filters and storage tanks. Those that shine are cumulative, those on the right are bulk:
In principle, water from a well can be drunk immediately - nature itself has created a natural filter system. Thanks to it, it became possible for the enterprise to use gentle cleaning methods that do not change the natural structure of water. Automatic water flow distribution panel on the filling line:

Bottle blowing workshop. Let's quickly look at it from above and look at the parameter control area.
Here bottles are checked for mechanical stability and geometric parameters. They are crushed
Dismember:
Weigh in parts and measure the thickness - check for uniform distribution of the material along the height of the bottle. Wonderful cones that can always be used at home are called PET preforms or blanks from which bottles are blown.
They are delivered here ready-made, but still undergo inspection. In the scrap box you can find funny art objects made from sticky preforms.
Each bottle has its own standard of preparation. On the left - five-liter, on the right 0.33:
While the preforms are being loaded into the blow molding machine, let's take a look into the laboratory.
The quality manager says a lot of unfamiliar words about the control system. But nothing, neither spectrophotometers nor ion chromatographs, can replace the nose. All batches of products must be sniffed. Even traffic jams!
The control of sniffers is organized in the most original way. Chemicals with odors are added to certain bottles unknown to them. They must not only detect them, but also identify them.
They can smell the smell of chlorine, fish, earth, or even rotten cabbage and a doormat - there are many options. I practically didn’t feel some of them even in concentrated form, and even more so when diluted in water.
This process is called tasting the finished product and sensory analysis of materials.

Let's return to blow molding machines.
The shop shift has only 2 employees and both are managers: the production manager and the blowing manager. Everything is automated. Even in the laboratory there are more living people - five.

The moving bottles of the air conveyor are mesmerizing.
They need to be filmed!

Over the course of 20 years, both the bottle and the label changed many times, visually moving away from the obvious “churchiness”. As a result, the dome became barely visible, and a flying dove was added, symbolizing spirituality, a sense of flight and good mood. And the mention of the blessing of the source by Patriarch of All Rus' Alexy II in 1994 became a completely invisible gold medal.

“Holy Spring” proves every day that just one healthy habit, maintaining hydration, can change you for the better!

Origin

Mineral composition of water "Holy Source"

* - according to Nielsen, 2015 – 2018

Corporation Nestle sells one of the oldest Russian brands of mineral water, Svyatoy Istochnik. During the seven years that the Holy Spring belonged to the Swiss, sales of this brand fell by more than half. The new owners of the production and brand promise to return the lost blessing and sales to the brand.

Mineral water under the brand "Holy Source" began to be sold in 1994. It was one of the first and most successful Russian producers of bottled water - a relatively new market for Russia. "Holy Spring" was bottled in Kostroma from three wells on the outskirts of the city. A feature of the brand’s marketing strategy was that the product was approved, which was indicated to buyers by the inscription on the bottle - “Bottled with the blessing of His Holiness the Patriarch.”

In 2002, the company that was involved in the production of the “Holy Spring” and the delivery of drinking water was purchased by the Nestle corporation for $50 million. Specialists from the Swiss company decided to modify the brand: they changed the design of the bottle and removed the “blessing” inscription. The changes were not beneficial.

As the Vedomosti newspaper writes, citing market research, in the first half of 2003, the share of the Holy Source in the Moscow market in monetary terms was 14.6%. After the rebranding, sales decreased by the end of 2003 to 12.5%. In 2008, the “Holy Spring” had only 6% of the capital’s sales. Now, in terms of production volumes, the brand, according to ACNielsen, occupies only 2% of the market.

Brand recognition has worsened and the loyal audience has decreased, writes the Kommersant newspaper. If in 2002, in opinion polls by Comcon, 10.5% of respondents said that they most often bought “Holy Source,” but now the share of the loyal audience has dropped to 5.9%. At the same time, the number of consumers of competing brands has, on the contrary, been growing all these years.

The new owners have already reached an agreement with the church

On Wednesday, Nestle announced that the Russian-Ukrainian group IDS will become the new owner of the Holy Source. It owns Ukrainian mineral water factories in Mirgorod, Morshyn and Truskavets, as well as the Russian Edelweiss in the Lipetsk region. In addition, the company distributes Borjomi.

The transaction amount has not been disclosed, but all market participants are confident that the “Holy Spring” is being sold for less than the price at which it was purchased. However, it is worth noting that the water delivery business, which was purchased along with the “source,” remains with Nestle. Representatives of IDS said that they will use their already established sales network and intend to focus on marketing promotion of their new brand.

They are confident in the success of IDS, especially since, according to the company manager, they have already received approval from the Kostroma diocese.