Knoxville-based Planet H2O bottled water is now available on grocery store shelves

Knoxville-based Planet H2O bottled water is now available on grocery store shelves throughout the region.

The "natural artesian" water can be found in Ingles, Food City, Kroger, Target, Publix and Food Giant grocery stores, as well as Weigel's, Pilot Flying J, Little General and Twice Daily convenience stores and on Amazon.com, operations manager Carey Bruner said.

Planet H2O water is bottled in Linden, Tennessee. Bruner and his father, James, Planet H2O's chief manager, were drilling for oil and gas in 2012 when they struck water.

"We hit an artesian aquifer," Bruner said. "No one had ever really drilled that deep before in that area."

The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation completed studies to determine the water had not had contact with the surface of the earth, Bruner said. Aging the water was difficult, but the rocks the water is in are 650 million years old.

Tests also were done to establish the water was fresh, and the Bruners started bottling it in 2015.

From aquifer to bottle

The Bruners built a bottling facility around the well they dug into.

"We had a hole in the ground," Bruner said. "We made it into a whole bottling facility, and basically, the water hasn't been exposed to the earth's atmosphere in millions of years until the person opens the bottle."

Bruner said the water runs straight from the ground through the bottling equipment into the bottle. The water does not have to go through a reverse osmosis process, which many bottled water companies use to remove impurities. It also removes natural, beneficial minerals.

"Our water still has the natural mineral content," Bruner said.

Source: Knoxville News Sentinel, by Cortney Roark

The East Tennessee Economic Development Agency markets and recruits business for the 15 counties in the greater Knoxville-Oak Ridge region of East Tennessee. Visit www.eteda.org

 

Published August 31, 2018