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 With the support of the EFIC Headway facility and the National Australia Bank, MH Waters Pty Ltd is tapping into the lucrative US bottled water market with a simply but aptly named product, Tasmanian Rain®.
The company has put its faith and extensive market research into the export value of the rain that falls from the pollution-free skies above Tasmania’s northwest coast. “We believed there was a market for rainwater that, as measured, falls from the cleanest air in the world, having come all the way from Antarctica without touching land for 10,000 miles,” said Alan Page, who, with his son Hunter, is one of MH Waters’ major shareholders. “We thought the United States market, especially New York, had the best potential for this clean and green concept.”
MH Waters is typical of Australia’s promising small to medium-sized exporters who are eligible for EFIC’s new financial guarantee facility. “EFIC Headway is distributed by a growing number of banks and forms an integral part of an exporter's relationship with its bank,” said Sunil Aranha, EFIC’s head of business development for small to medium-sized enterprises. MH Waters’ proud marketing claim is that Tasmanian Rain® is uniquely pure rainwater captured on “the pristine island of Tasmania” without ever having touched the ground. The rainwater is collected on a property inland from Table Cape and then shipped in 24,000-litre capacity bladders to a bottling plant in the United States. The company is confident that Tasmanian Rain’s very low mineral and salt content makes it an attractive alternative to spring water, which is more commonplace in the bottled water market. “We needed additional funds to take the next step, however we could not provide the security required by our bank. EFIC’s assistance through the EFIC Headway guarantee means that we can now seek larger orders and go to the next milestone in selling.”
Participating banks
NAB, Westpac, HSBC, ANZ, BankWest, Commonwealth Bank, Bank of Queensland, Bendigo Bank and St.George.
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