Oman's Barzman water denies any impurity in its products

Muscat: A mineral water bottling company in Oman has expressed shock at the media announcement by the Regional Municipalities and Water Resources Ministry alleging ‘impurity’ in one of their products.

“The brief media announcement in today’s local papers has confused our loyal customers,” Aldho Matthew, Production Manager at the Barzman National LLC, told Gulf News.

The Ministry, in a press release, stated that the company was asked to withdraw 200ml cups, sold under Sultan brand, under the batch of 26/5/2012 to 26/5/2013.

“The Sultan brand is packaged especially for Sultan Centre and only one cup of 200ml was found to be impure by the Inspection teams,” Mathew pointed out.

“There was nothing wrong with the other Cups in the same batch and the Inspection team agrees too,” he said, adding that they were surprised at the media announcement by the Ministry.

“We were not even informed about it,” he added.

Mathew said that they had a meeting with the Sultan Centre management and the two have decided to appeal against the decision to withdraw the batch.

“It has caused irrevocable damage with consumer misunderstanding the announcement due to lack of clarification as well as details,” he feels.

The company, which bottles mineral water in Oman for almost a decade, has plants in Muscat and Sinaw in eastern region. The company’s main product is marketed under the brand name of Barzman.

“In all these years of business it has never happened,” Mathew claimed. He said that the ministry officials should have visited the plant.

“Our water is pure but this announcement has sent wrong signals across the country,” he pointed out.

Talking about impurity found in one cup at the Sultan Centre by the concerned authorities, he said that it could be due to the container (cup). “We get the cups from the UAE in a batch of 2000 so it is possible one of the cups caused impurity,” he said, reiterating that the water supplied by them was never found to be impure and they follow stringent measures to supply clean drinking water.