PETpla.net Insider 11 / 2010

REGIONAL MARKET REPORTS 15 PET planet insider Vol. 11 No. 11/10 www.petpla.net March 18, 2010 Alma Group – Roxane in La Ferriere de Brochard Alma Roxane – Pierre Papillaud - the man, character and personality is Alma-Roxane. We met: Pierre Papillaud, Chairman According to the French beverage data and statistics, Alma Group is a leading company in terms of soft beverage volume produced in France. Cristaline from Alma Roxane is in the lead in terms of brands in France. The company has the biggest share (more than 20% in 2008) in French mar- kets of bottled water. Pierre Papillaud is chair- man of the Alma Group and part owner. Some will call him an unpredictable personality of the French beverage market; others consider him the char- ismatic builder of a beverage empire in France in competi- tion with the global giants such as Danone and Nestlé. Company history in brief At the beginning of the 1990s consolidation and its regulatory consequences in the French bottled beverage market was still essentially dominated by single source mineral water produced by the three owners of what were then the best known national brands – Nestlé, Danone and Neptune. The owners of Neptune soon realised, however, that if they wished to compete nation- ally with the other two, a new approach was required and so the multi-source spring water concept of Cristaline was born. In 1992 the Cristaline brand was created by Neptune, which spread country-wide in numer- ous regions of France. Neptune, located in the South of France and owned by Pierre Castel, and Roxanne located in the North owned by Pierre Papillaud, eventually formed the Alma Group as a joint venture sourcing water Cristaline - a multi-source spring water concept