Font Vella, from a water carrier from Sant Hilari to a brand recognized throughout Spain

BarcelonaFont Vella, one of the best-selling bottled water brands in Spain, is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year with changes to its bottle model and an increase in investment in circularity, according to the company itself. The brand, which has its main plant in Sant Hilari Sacalm (Selva), has been owned by the French multinational food company Danone since 1994.

The company's beginnings are marked by the figure of Jaume Traveries i Riera, better known as Jaime del piccolo, a water seller from Sant Hilari who sold water in jugs during the summer, mainly to holidaymakers from wealthy families who spent a few days in the town escaping the heat of Barcelona and other Catalan cities. Traveries, who owes his fame to the fact that he was mute and communicated with a piccolo, filled the jugs at Font Vella, one of the largest in the town from which the company was created.

In fact, due to its location in the Guilleries massif, Sant Hilari Sacalm has a large number of springs and is called Ethe town of a hundred fountainsAnother of the town's notable springs is Font Picant – where there is an old spa – which shares its name with the sparkling water that Font Vella marketed in the late 1990s and which became known through a television advertising campaign featuring the voice of journalist Miquel Calçada, Mikimoto, It used to say with a peculiar refrain: "Fuente Picante, fine sparkling water."

Despite having been born as an independent company, Danone ended up merging all the companies dedicated to the water business in the State into a single subsidiary. This meant the unification of Font Vella with Lanjarón, although the group maintains both brands. Apart from the original plant in San Hilario Sacalmo, Font Vella has another in Sigüenza (in the province of Guadalajara), to which must be added the Lanjarón bottling plant in Granada. All of the centers employ around 200 people.

More circularity and commitment to restoration

Within the beverage market, mineral water is the most consumed in Spain, with 139 liters per person per year, according to Aneabe, the mineral water companies' association. Danone does not provide specific data by brand or subsidiary in Spain, but does explain that the water business represented almost €5 billion in worldwide revenue last year, out of a total of almost €27.4 billion in sales, representing 18%.

Font Vella has taken advantage of the 150th anniversary to introduce changes to the design of its plastic bottle, which had not changed for a quarter of a century and which the company boasts is the first in Spain to achieve 100% recycled plastic. Thus, the new design more closely resembles that of the glass bottle sold through the HORECA (hotel, restaurant, and catering) channel: "It's a growing trend," said François Lacombe, CEO of Danone Iberia, at the Font Vella anniversary celebration event held this past Wednesday.

In fact, glass already accounts for approximately 20% of the production at the Sant Hilari factory, where the plastic molds for the bottles at the group's other plants in Spain are also produced. The commitment to glass and the catering industry has been complemented by the introduction of sparkling water in glass bottles also intended for bars, restaurants, and hotels. Furthermore, the company is committed to the "circularity" of its packaging—in Lacombe's words—and, in this regard, ensures that 30% of the sales volume with glass bottles for the catering industry are returnable, so each bottle can be reused up to six times.

In this sense, in the last five years Danone has invested around 28 million in Sant Hilari and another 12 million in the Sigüenza plant to renew the production systems, which in the case of the production center in La Selva include the different bottling lines, the production of plastic molds and bottles, and the logistics line for more than just bottles.

Finally, to mark its century and a half of existence, the Catalan brand has also introduced eight new products: three waters with fruit juice, another three waters with fruit flavors and two with tea extracts.

The point that has brought the most criticism to the brand, especially in recent years, is that it is the only mineral water made in Catalonia that is not labeled in Catalan, despite the success achieved nationwide whose name is in this language and Danone's Catalan origins are also presentIn 2010, Plataforma per la Llengua publicly pressured the company, although Font Vella only briefly introduced Catalan on labels in 2013 in an advertising campaign called Living Set, which was abandoned after a few months to return to labeling only in Spanish.