A local bottled water manufacturer has confirmed that it has shut its doors and is currently in a legal dispute over the packaging of bottled water with its brand on it. Nautilus water is currently ahead of plans to re-launch full operations, potentially in partnership with another company.
Guardian Business understands that the water company may soon be set to partner with Source River, the producer of Echo Water, in order to achieve business synergies that will allow both to cut their costs of production in the highly competitive bottled water market.
Source River's president, former Cabinet minister and MP Tennyson Wells declined to comment when contacted by this newspaper yesterday and President of Nautilus Water Jason Evans said he could not comment as "nothing is finalized yet".
However, Guardian Business understands that a partnership between the two companies could be announced as early as next week.
In response to questions about whether financial difficulties had caused the company to lose access to its facilities late last year, forcing a shutdown of operations, Evans, confirmed that the company stopped production in December 2013, inventoried product was
o Nautilus, page B7 depleted in January 2014 and the company has been closed since.
However, Evans suggested that financial challenges had not driven the move, instead telling Guardian Business that the company's Lucayan Tropical facility was "too small to produce to meet market demand, so we have been in negotiations to get the brand up and running in a larger facility".
As to whether the company is aware of anyone else who might be packaging water with its logo on it and selling it as Nautilus water without the company's permission, since the depletion of the company's inventory, as sources have suggested to Guardian Business, Evans said, "This is a legal matter we are not able to discuss this matter at this time".
Evans said that 20 staff had been let go when the company closed, and five have since been re-engaged in a contractual basis, ahead of the company's impending move to a larger facility.
"This new facility will help us produce more efficiently and will help us meet the numbers we projected for 2014. If all goes well, we should have all Nautilus products back on stream by mid-May," said Evans.
He said that as many as 30 staff could be taken on, including as many of the company's former staff as are still available, once the business launches full operations again.
According to sources close to the matter, should the decision to officially join Nautilus and Echo water under the same company go ahead, the plan would be for Echo to be branded as the premium water product, while Nautilus would be targeted to compete with Chelsea's Choice and Aquapure.
Geoffrey Knowles, operations manager and principal at Aquapure, said he would not be surprised to hear of a merging of the two companies.
"It would sort of confirm what I had said last year, if you have two of the larger players in the business having to merge or accommodate each other because of the competition and the lack of opportunity," said Knowles. "They may be trying to get together to create some type of volume because in manufacturing, its all a volume business.
"Unless you can reach that break-even point, it's really tough to stay in business when you've got equipment costs, bank loans, electricity, which is huge, staff costs. There are very heavy variable costs."
Noting that he views his biggest competition in the sector as coming from foreign imports of bottled water, Knowles added that the decision by Coca Cola manufacturer, Caribbean Bottling, to start locally producing Coca Cola's Dasani brand of bottled water in late 2012 would have also made it more difficult for other companies to compete in the local market.
While producing bottle water can be a costly exercise, Caribbean Bottling would have already had the infrastructure in place to make drinking water, given water is an ingredient of its Coca Cola product, therefore making it "easy" to branch out into water production.

Click here to read more at The Nassau Guardian