History
The spring in Southern France from which Perrier is drawn was originally known as Les Bouillens (The Bubbles). It had been used as a spa since Roman times. According to the company, Hannibal and his army, having passed through Spain en route to his intended conquest of Rome during 218 BC, decided to rest for a while at Les Bouillens, from which the men took water for refreshment.[8]
Perrier was first introduced to Britain in 1863.[9] Local doctor Louis Perrier bought the spring in 1898 and operated a commercial spa there; he also bottled the water for sale. He later sold the spring to St John Harmsworth, a wealthy British visitor. Harmsworth was the younger brother of the newspaper magnates Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere. He had come to France to learn the language. Dr. Perrier showed him the spring, and he decided to buy it. He sold his share of the family newspapers to raise the money. Harmsworth closed the spa, as spas were becoming unfashionable. He renamed the spring Source Perrier and started bottling the water in distinctive green bottles.[10][11] Harmsworth marketed the product in Britain at a time when Frenchness was seen as chic and aspirational to the middle classes. It was advertised as the Champagne of mineral water. Advertising in newspapers like the Daily Mail established the brand. For a time, 95% of sales were in Britain and the US.
Perrier's reputation for purity suffered a blow in 1990 when a laboratory in North Carolina in the United States found benzene, a carcinogen, in several bottles. Perrier stated that it was an isolated incident of a worker having made a mistake in filtering and that the spring itself was unpolluted. The incident ultimately led to the worldwide withdrawal of the product, with around 160 million bottles of Perrier being recalled.[12][13]
Two years later in 1992, Perrier was bought by Nestlé, one of the world's leading food and drink companies.[14] Nestlé had to contend with competition from the Agnelli family for ownership of the business.[15]
In 2004, a crisis erupted when Nestlé announced a restructuring plan for Perrier. The following year, Perrier was ordered to halt restructuring due to a failure to consult adequately with staff.[16]
In April 2024, following reports that products had been contaminated with germs of possible faecal origin, an estimated 2.9 million bottles of Perrier water were destroyed before reaching the market. This was followed by an announcement in June that year that one-litre bottles of Perrier Vert would be pulled from the French market after a majority of wells used to capture the water at the Vergèze manufacturing site had their use terminated, suspended or diverted to other product lines, following a product safety inspection at the manufacturing site on 30 May conducted by government agencies.[17][18]
