Oravida Water secures 20-year consent for $800 a year amid export expansion
Thursday, 5 February 2026
A company once at the heart of a national dispute about the sale of the country’s water rights to overseas companies has a new, 20-year right to continue taking millions of litres of water to sell offshore, for which it will pay $800 a year.
The Otakiri, Bay of Plenty company ‒ which is now significantly owned by Auckland student Feng Rui Shi, with a minority stake held by his father Stone Shi ‒ has just installed a new solar farm to power its operation, and is looking at significant expansion overseas.
Oravida Water was owned by Oravida Group founder Stone Shi in 2016 when it hit the headlines, after revelations the company was paying about $500 a year to draw up to 400,000 litres of water a day from the Otakiri Aquifer. Its permit allows it to take up to 146 million litres a year from the aquifer, although the company says it does not take the full amount.
That consent expired this year, but the company has since received consent for another 20 years of water, taking it for about $800. The company sells the water to luxury hotel brands in China and New Zealand in bottles and 10-litre bag-in-boxes. It will not reveal its revenues.
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Environmentalists and Green Party politicians were aghast companies such as Oravida and others were able to take water at such a low price and sell it for profit overseas. But it is not illegal, and more than 70 other companies do it around New Zealand.
Oravida Water has continued with its operation and, after a rocky time through Covid, is seeking to expand. It has installed a solar farm at its Otakiri bottling plant, supplying two-thirds of the electricity required to run daily operations and strengthening its credentials with international luxury hotel groups that increasingly demand verified sustainability from suppliers.
General manager Robyn Farmer said the renewable energy project could provide a new model for rural manufacturers, who often face less reliable electricity supply but can utilise vacant land to install scalable, solar generation alongside existing operations.
The solar installation, completed late last year, has a capacity of 144 kilowatts and produces enough renewable electricity during peak generation to power the equivalent of about 40 to 50 average homes. The system supplies the majority of Oravida’s bottling operations during daylight hours, when production demand is highest, Farmer said.
The company has a potential production capacity of 30,000 bottles per day and exports about 85% of output, with the remainder sold to the domestic market. After returning to pre-Covid production and export levels this year, volumes are expected to increase by up to 40% in 2026 and 2027, driven by international expansion and new hotel supply agreements, she said.
The investment in the solar farm — the cost of which was not disclosed — is believed to be the first time a New Zealand bottled water operation has integrated large-scale solar generation directly into its production process.
“This is about future-proofing the business. Sustainability is no longer optional if you want to work with international luxury hotel brands. It has become a baseline requirement.”
In China, Oravida is stocked in the likes of the Mandarin Oriental and The Peninsula Hotels, where premium bottled water is positioned as part of the overall dining and wellness experience.
In New Zealand, the brand is also served in selected five-star hotels, including JW Marriott, reflecting the company’s deliberate focus on high-end hotels and fine-dining venues rather than mass-market retail.
Farmer says global hotel chains now require suppliers to complete extensive sustainability and carbon-reporting documentation as part of procurement processes, with environmental credentials often carrying more weight than traditional product information.
“In many cases, more than half of the application is focused on sustainability, carbon reduction and social responsibility,” she said. “If you cannot tick those boxes, the door simply does not open.”
As well as reducing the company’s carbon footprint, the array has also improved operational resilience at the rural Otakiri site, which experiences multiple power outages each year. While not designed as a full backup system, the on-site generation reduces exposure to grid disruption during daylight production hours and supports more consistent output.
Expansion
The renewable energy investment comes as Oravida prepares to enter the Australian market for the first time this year, with its initial shipment scheduled this month. The company is also laying the groundwork for future expansion into the United States while continuing to grow its Asian customer base.
Farmer says sustainability expectations in China have evolved rapidly over the past five years, driven by both consumer awareness and stricter procurement standards from international hotel groups.
“Ten years ago, sustainability simply wasn’t part of the conversation with customers at home and in Asia, today, it’s central to how premium hotels select suppliers.”
She says the export opportunity remained significant, with New Zealand water offering a distinct taste and mineral profile compared with European alternatives.
“Our water is naturally very soft, with high silica and low total dissolved solids which makes it quite different to Italian and French mineral waters, which are much harder. In premium dining settings, that difference matters.”
Sourced from an ancient underground aquifer beneath New Zealand’s landscape, Oravida’s water has been naturally filtered for more than 1800 years.
As export demand grows, Oravida expects to increase staffing at its Otakiri operation, with plans to introduce extended production shifts over the next 12 months.
“This is not about green marketing,” Farmer said. “Rather, it's about building a business that can compete in the world’s most demanding hospitality markets, both on quality and on sustainability.”
Green response
The Green Party continued to try and curb the sale of New Zealand water by private operators, including proposing a bottling levy on operations that would go towards protecting freshwater, and last year supported Debbie Ngarewa-Packer’s member’s bill which would have prohibited water extraction for the purpose of on-selling in packaged form.
Lan Pham, the Green’s spokesperson for environment, said water bottling companies, like Oravida, capitalise and exploit what should be a protected resource, and building a solar farm did not provide social licence for the activity.
“Excessive water takes provide New Zealand almost no financial benefit to New Zealanders and should be prevented, or at minimum, companies should pay for the commercial use of water,” Pham said.
“With big business water bottling, we get these perverse situations where, for example, with recent summers in Hawke’s Bay, residents in Napier and Hastings were asked to conserve water while water bottling operations continued undisrupted.
He added, “a solar farm does not necessarily provide a water bottling company with a social license. The harmful impacts of microplastics are well-documented and health impacts in our bodies and in harm to wildlife is mounting.
“We support renewable energy generation, but electricity should be used for people to heat their homes, not provide corporates with the opportunity to extract profits from public commons, especially scarce ones like freshwater.”