Chamber, City express dismay over water company closure
By John Waters Jr.
Editor
The Calistoga City Council Tuesday joined in a chorus of sadness over the loss of Calistoga Beverage Company one week after the water company’s parent company, Nestle Waters North America, announced plans to close the plant, effective today.
“We’re saddened to hear of the closing of Calistoga Beverage Company’s bottling plant here in Calistoga,” said Chamber of Commerce CEO Rex Albright at the Tuesday meeting, echoing an e-mailed statement he’d sent some days earlier.
“The loss of 24 jobs held by friends and neighbors is always difficult to accept. The company has been not just a corporate icon since 1924, but a model corporate citizen for the community of Calistoga,” he said.
Calistoga Beverage Company has owned the water bottling plant in Calistoga since the 1970s, although the original water company was opened in 1924.
Also at Tuesday’s meeting, Chris Canning, the water company’s general manager, said that the company is in no hurry to sell the plant, but will “entertain any offers.”
Canning added that 16 of those facing unemployment were given positions at other affiliated water company operations. As for Canning, he announced a change in his own future — that does not include moving on.
“I’ve been with this company for 16 years,” Canning told the Calistoga City Council. “Rather than make a career change, I’ve decided to make a lifestyle change. I will stay in Calistoga.”
Calistoga Mayor Jack Gingles lauded the water company as an enterprise that has always been an asset to the community. Councilwoman Karen Slusser echoed the thought, and added that it has “put Calistoga on the map,” internationally.
“I know I’ve been flying on airplanes and open magazines and seen advertising about places in London and other places in the world, then turned the page and there was the Calistoga water company,” Slusser said. “You have done more to brand our name than any other company.”
Canning will remain on the Calistoga Chamber of Commerce Board of Director and will continue working in Calistoga as a member of the Chamber’s Sidewalk Dining Committee, Albright said.
Nestle will continue to maintain the grounds and building owned by Calistoga Beverage, possibly leasing the iconic sculpture on its front lawn to the City of Calistoga, Canning said.
“Anyone who drives by the facility would not even notice that the plant is closed,” Canning said. “It’s not going to be closed and shuttered.”
‘No other choice’
The plant’s owners could have made the decision to close the plant a year ago, when the company laid off 78 percent of its employees, Canning told the Council.
“But that was a last-resort measure,” he said. “Unfortunately, the economic reality left the company with no other choice.”
Unlike the first shift of layoffs, the subsidiary of Nestle Waters North America claims the decision to close the Calistoga facility was not sales-related, and that beverage sales are stable.
According to a prepared statement, the 30-year-old Nestle affiliate has only been operating at a small percentage of its capacity, mostly due to needed upgrading of equipment, Canning said.
Although Calistoga’s charm is its isolation, that isolation — away from any major transportation corridor — was costly.
“Next to advertising, the greatest expense was transportation,” he said, adding that transportation was also an issue likely pushing the company’s competitor, Crystal Geyser, to consider moving.
“With such slim profit margins in the industry, transportation becomes a serious issue,” he said.
Production shifts
Recently, production operations at Calistoga Beverage had shifted to plants able to produce products more cost effectively.
In November 2008, the company claimed the layoff of close to 80 percent of its staff was, “in response to poor sales throughout Nestle’s beverage portfolio.”
Nestle plans to continue producing organic fruit juice drinks that are currently being bottled in a Southern California plant. Nestle is also considering the continuation of its Calistoga Sparkling Mineral Water in glass bottles at another location. The home and office delivery of Calistoga brand mountain water in five-gallon bottles produced in Livermore will continue as usual.
Production of the sparkling mineral water in PET plastic bottles will cease.
During its peak performance period in summer 2008, the plant had 110 employees, according to Mary Ellen Hester, Canning’s assistant.
Canning said the company has several months supplies of the Calistoga water bottled, so the brand will not disappear for a while.