Romaqua Group, the largest domestic bottler of mineral water, targets a 7-10% market share within the next 2-3 years with Aquatique, the new brand launched in the summer.

The summer's high temperatures played an important role in the trend of Aquatique sales, a brand Romaqua has yet to promote, although the product is a newcomer on the market. This is the third mineral water brand in Romaqua's portfolio after Borsec, which accounts for the highest domestic sales, and Stanceni, which has been distributed nationwide since last year.

"The hot weather led to a rapid market penetration for this product, as well as recognition with no promotional effort.

stated Adrian Teslovan, marketing manager at Romaqua Group.

In order to bottle Aquatique water (which has a low mineral content) the company used a new spring in the Busteni area, and was able to cope with the extremely high demand over the summer period. The high temperatures in July-August drove mineral water consumption up by around 50% against the same period in 2006.

During the first few months of this year, Romaqua acquired a production line with a capacity of 36,000 litres (per hour) for bottling Aquatique still water, Giusto Natura juices and Giusto ice tea, which was also launched this year with total investments worth 12m euros (which includes annexes and a water treatment station).

According to company data, the new bottling line boosted the production capacity of the Busteni-based Romaqua plant by 150%.

Last year, the producer invested around 10m euros in water bottling lines for Borsec and Stanceni, in order to expand production capacities. For Stanceni, Romaqua completed the construction of a new production unit in 2006.

According to SNAM (Mineral Water National Company) data, Romaqua bottled 230 million litres of mineral water last year, and was the largest bottler on the domestic market, with a market share of above 20%. Borsec, (Romaqua group's main brand) is among several Romanian soft drinks that are promoted abroad. "At present, we have no plans to export Aquatique," stated Romaqua Group representatives.

Romaqua Group expects its sales to rise by 30% this year against 2006, to more than 90m euros. Last year, the group derived turnover worth 238.7m RON (67.7m euros), up 36% against 2005.