How Fiji water became a tourism icon [SMH]
Fiji water is making an international splash.
Fiji may be in hot water with its friends over the island republic's policies since a military coup in 2006, but when it comes to cold bottled water, its popularity is international.

...In the US, it's shipped by sea and and now stands second among all imported bottled water behind France's Evian.

And among customers is US President Barack Obama.

...The exposure may have delighted Tourism Fiji and the water exporters, but it may not have sat too kindly with Fiji Water's American rivals.

Claims arose that the Fiji company produces its water at a high environmental cost, at a production plant running on diesel 24 hours a day and burning fossil fuel to import plastic bottles by sea from China and a one-litre bottle of Fiji Water, it was said, results in 0.25kg of greenhouse emissions.

...Mr Gilmour sold Natural Waters in 2004 for a reported $US50 million ($A64million) to Roll International, a billion-dollar private holding company in Los Angeles with diverse interests including large producers of citrus fruits and nuts, owned by Hollywood couple Stewart and Lynda Resnick.

Production of Fiji Water and by eight other members of the Fiji Water Institute stopped briefly last year when the interim government formed after the 2006 military coup imposed a tax of 20 cents per litre on bottled water; it resumed after the tax was shelved by the government.