Fiji Water sheds workers

April 21, 2009 06:32:00 PM

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Fiji Water announced today it was laying off 92 workers from its 450 member workforce in Fiji due to a slowdown in its main export market.
 
The company out of  Yaqara in Western Viti Levu exports bottled mineral water mainly to the United States of America. 
Company media consultant Nirmal Singh confirmed the move and said it was because of the global economic downturn. 

Fiji Water’s Fiji cut down follows a 40 percent layoff in its US workforce last December, attributed to weaker sales. 

The water industry in the US, according to media reports there, has suffered in recent times from a combination of factors. 

“The $12-billion-a-year business has gotten whacked in the past year by the weak economy, an environmental backlash against plastic bottles, and competition from trendy canteens, often filled with tap water. That has left water marketers taking drastic steps to win back consumers, including a 3D Super Bowl ad and investments in the Fijian rain forest,” reported Business Week in January. 

“U.S. consumers gulped 8.9 billion gallons of bottled water in 2008, a 2.3 percent increase from the previous year, according to the research firm Beverage Marketing.

“That's a sharp decline, though, from the 8 percent to 12percent annual growth the business enjoyed earlier in the decade, when such celebrities as Paris Hilton posed with Evian bottles and consumers drove around with cases of bottled water in the backs of their cars and SUVs.”

Fiji Water, according to Business Week, has subsequently launched an educational Web site called Fijigreen.com and is contributing funds to reduce logging in the country.