Our Story
Our Story
A lot has happened since our first bottle of water was drawn at a dairy farm in Pembrokeshire over 30 years ago. Read on to find out more about the history, achievements and events that have shaped Princes Gate.
Pre-1991
Pembrokeshire and its ancient rock
Pembrokeshire is beautiful, simple as that. It’s a Welsh county full of history and awesome geological features with the longest coastal national park in the UK. It’s one of those rare places that has both sandy beaches and wild mountainous landscapes. For the sake of our story we’ll focus on these, the hills of Pembrokeshire. They’re made up of ancient rock, some of which were formed between 600 and 290 million years ago. This is where our water comes from.
1991
It’s a family affair
It all began on an organic farm in a remote corner of Pembrokeshire with David and Glyn Jones and their parents bottling Princes Gate water by hand. It started as an experiment in the family’s efforts to diversify their farming practices. They managed to produce just 36 bottles a day in their microplant.
2004
Full to the brim
Demand for our water steadily increased and eventually every farm outhouse and converted barn were full to bursting with staff and stock so plans had to be made for a fully fledged bottling plant. This gave us some room to grow and improve our supply whilst also setting us in good stead to put in place some good working and environmental practices.
2008
Supporting (and hydrating) our Welsh sporting heroes
Our relationship with the Welsh Rugby Union and the Football Association of Wales began over 15 years ago. We have shared years of sporting ups and downs, lots of laughs and of course a lot of hydration. We now support many other sporting bodies including Cardiff City, the Scarlets and the Ospreys. Our partnership with the Welsh Rugby Union in particular started in 2008, the year the boys went on to win the Six Nations Grand Slam. Coincidence?
2012
Reducing our impact
In the space of just a few years we made great leaps in terms of lessening our environmental impact as we grew. Firstly, by considerably reducing the weight of our bottles, allowing us to save millions of grams of plastic that we were using in our bottles as well as the energy used in transportation.
We also decided to invest in a £1.5m bottle blower. So, instead of receiving a finished bottle from the manufacturer, we receive tiny little preforms, which are then blown into our carefully designed bottle here on site. Now, instead of 1,000 trucks full of bottles we receive just 50 loads of preforms in a year.
And we could not forget the rather big job of replacing the dirty old diesel generators which fuelled the factory with 3 phase electricity, a much cleaner and more efficient source of energy.
2014
Freewheeling
Our environmental efforts started to attract some attention and in 2014 we started to work with The Carbon Trust, soon becoming a Best Practice Case Study for them. This included achieving Zero to Landfill verification. We wanted to make a difference, not only with our environmental efforts but also by reaching out and supporting our community. We’ve proudly supported many charities close to our heart over the years, including Ty Hafan and Noah’s Ark Children’s Charity, but 2014 saw us establish the Princes Gate Trust. Since then, the Trust has supported and helped many deserving children and young people in need, a fact of which we are immensely proud.
During this time we also invested heavily in renewable energy at our factory, installing a wind turbine as well as solar panels, enabling us to become the first soft drinks manufacturer in the UK to be totally self-sufficient with green energy produced on site. And to top it off we started work on our wildflower meadows and planted trees around the farm. We were rewarded with a Royal visit from HM Queen Elizabeth. Very fancy indeed.
2015
Revolutionising our production line
From filling bottles by hand to state of the art production! This is when we invested in a high speed production line, the very first of its kind in the UK. This meant we could start keeping up with increasing demand and provide more customers with our naturally Welsh water.
2018
Introducing recycled plastic into our range
We were one of the first bottled water companies to start using recycled plastic from within the UK in our bottles. This helped us to minimise our carbon footprint and further reduce waste. We now use a minimum of 51% recycled plastic (excluding cap and label) across our whole range with the aim to use as much home generated waste as we can to make those tiny preforms. We’ve done a lot to minimise our impact but we can and will do more. We’ll continue to work with customers to educate and encourage future generations to close the loop and recycle what is a valuable resource, not waste.
2018
Princes Gate becomes part of the family
In 2018, Nestlé Waters UK acquired a majority stake in Princes Gate. Nestlé Waters UK later acquired the remaining interest in Princes Gate, making it the sole shareholder. This gave us so much opportunity to further enhance the positive impact that Princes Gate has been striving to achieve for our people, our community and our environment. An exciting moment in the Princes Gate journey!
2019
The Team Raises the bar again
Our team is central to our story, it’s them who have always gone the extra mile to make improvements to our processes, environmental practices and our service. We care about what we do and how we do it. We believe in the personal touch and our custom is based on good relationships, this is how we like to work. We’re excited to see where this team and our story takes us next.
2020
Introducing our hero range
We’ve been using rPET in our bottles since 2016 and 4 years later we were delighted to have our first bottle preform made of 100% recycled plastic (excluding cap and label) which is also 100% recyclable. We are rather proud of this achievement as it makes us the first Welsh bottled water manufacturer to produce a bottle preform made completely out of other bottles. Environment will always be key to Princes Gate, and we are always 100% committed to doing better, that’s why we will continue to improve and hopefully our entire range of preforms, caps and labels can be made of recycled plastic in the coming years.
2020
We said thank you to the NHS
2019 saw the beginning of the unprecedented covid pandemic which left us thinking hard about how we could be of help during such hard times. In an effort to help our NHS Healthcare Heroes in 2020, we created our charity multi-packs. Not only did it raise spirits with its bright rainbow packaging, it also meant we could donate 50% of profits directly to support frontline workers and those affected by the virus. Our customers supported this initiative 100% and we can’t thank them enough.
2020
Flying by the seat of our plants
The Princes Gate Meadow is bursting with life thanks to our very own Site Services Manager, Pete Moran. In his own words he “didn’t know the first thing about rewilding” but he knew some people who did and The Royal Botanical Gardens were only too pleased to ‘spring’ into action to help get Pete started. Now our beautiful 5 hectares field is a flurry of wild flowers, honey bees and a duck pond.
2021
We sign first pan Wales deal with WRU
We’ve been hydrating our sporting heroes across Wales for many years now as you well know, but we’ve taken it a step further…no, we didn’t think it was possible either! We are very proud to have pioneered the first all-encompassing deal in Welsh rugby, that will see our lovely water from Pembrokeshire fuelling the whole of professional and elite rugby in Wales. We are very excited to further support grassroots sport within this partnership, with the aim of providing opportunity within our local communities and the young people within them.
2021
Race. Rehydrate. Recycle.
Committing to supply our ‘hero’ range (bottles made entirely from other bottles, excluding cap and label) to all race events. We work really closely with our race partners to ensure that all waste generated by the event is cleared post event. We also commit to collecting and returning what bottles we can get our hands on back to our factory and back into the recycling system and into another bottle. We hope one day that all events can become closed loop and we will do all we can to support this.