A newly-launched, multi-million dollar bottled water business in Samoa claims its product is purer than that of one of its main rivals, Fiji.
The South Pacific Water company was launched in the week-end with a promise from one of the directors, Lupesina Fred Grey, that the product will inject millions of dollars to the local economy.
Lupesina says one of its main advantages over other bottled water from the region is its purity.
"I guess we want to be the first Pacific nation to be environmentally friendly ahead of other Pacific states and I said this to the Samoan government the other day, that the one thing Samoa has over say, Fiji, is we don't have a mass agricultural base so we don't have to import pesticides and chemicals, unlike Fiji who have sugar cane plantations, who have flour mills. Samoa doesn't have any of that. So if you're comparing the two destinations this is as pure as you can get here."
Lupesina Fred Grey says there are big markets for South Pacific Water in the United States as well as in New Zealand and Australia.
And he says the company expects to be supplying the airline Virgin Blue by the end of the year.
