Foreign firm allowed to bottle millions of litres of water from Belfast aquifer

Labour Candidate for Waimakariri, Dan Rosewarne has expressed concern that a valuable water consent has been transferred to Cloud Ocean Water Ltd, an overseas company registered in March with the business classification for manufacturing mineral water.

Dan Rosewarne said, “If the entire water allocation is used, the plant will be free to extract 4.32 million litres of water per day from the Belfast aquifer. That is more water than the entire suburb of Riccarton uses in one day.”

For over six years Labour have been proposing a royalty on large commercial water takes that could be passed back to local Government, to reduce other rates or clean up waterways.

Dan Rosewarne further stated that, “I have no doubt that this will not sit right with the people of Waimakariri. Where a valuable resource like aquifer water is being extracted by overseas companies for commercial profit then the people of New Zealand have a right to get a return for it.”

Cloud Ocean Water Ltd is majority owned by Ling Hai Group, a China-based company with broad interests, including the Castlebrae farm in Marlborough, which it converted to a winery focused on exporting to China.