Coca Cola starts 'smartwater' production in Hungary

BUDAPEST - Coca Cola Hungary is starting up production of its new "Glaceau smartwater" premium product, a vapor distilled water with added electrolytes, the company announced here on Monday in a statement.

The bottling of the new product has been made possible after an investment of 1.8 billion Hungarian forints (5.6 million euros), according to the communique published by Hungarian news agency MTI.

According to Coca Cola: "Glaceau smartwater is inspired by the way mother nature makes water, known as the hydrologic cycle. We simulate this process by vapor distilling water, making every drop as pure as the very first drop of rain (before it passes through pollutants, of course). If that's not smart enough, we then one-up mother nature by adding in electrolytes for a clean crisp taste."

Coca-Cola will initially sell the water in Italy, Austria, Russia, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Ireland. Annual production could ramp up to 100 million bottles in the next years.

Minas Agelidis, Managing Director of Coca-Cola HBC Hungary, said that "smartwater" was one of the specialty products of the dynamically expanding water market in the world, which has become the number one premium brand in the United States and Britain.

As a result of the continuous capacity expansion of recent years, Coca-Cola HBC Hungary's exports tripled, now exporting soft drinks, fruit juices and mineral waters to 26 countries in Europe.

In 2017, the company built the largest food warehouse in Hungary and in 2018 acquired another 13 hectare property in Dunaharaszti, central Hungary, where the largest Central European production base of the Coca-Cola HBC group could be created.