Danone Global CEO Antoine De Saint-Affrique On Evian’s Bicentennial: “Evian Is A Blessing Of A Brand”

Evian has not changed a single drop.

The natural mineral water–untouched, yet relevant for 200 years–maneuvering through changing culture.

Every sip that hits the tongue stems from precipitation that hit the ground at evian’s Impluvium, the UNESCO-recognized geopark also known as the Plateau de Gavot in Évian-les-Bains, France. It sits beneath the edge of the French Alps right along the Swiss border with the backdrop of its famed Dent d’Oche mountain peak.

Filtered solely through glacial rocks over a 15-year time span, each bottle of evian is filled with water that has no human interaction until it sees light for the first time since it hit the earth once it fills into its new bottled home. Delicate human involvement solely consists of protecting the land–evian’s single source–the Impluvium, and assisting it toward its next 200 years.

“Whatever you do today will have an impact 15 years later…We are a company that is thinking in generations,” says Antoine de Saint-Affrique, Global CEO of Danone, evian’s parent company.

In his first US interview for evian’s bicentennial, de Saint-Affrique tells me about the “magic” of evian’s Impluvium. “If you pollute or don’t take care of it, what comes out will be altered,” he says. “The setting: the Alps, the nature–it’s a place where we prove that you can bring an entire community together to do the right thing for the long term. Working with the farmers, municipalities, and working on things that will benefit our kids and our grandchildren. That is the miracle of this place.”

It’s the site where the Rhone Glacier stood before it began melting about 25,000 years ago, now basking along Lake Geneva, where runoff that doesn’t make it into evian’s bottles drains into. Only 15% of precipitation in the territory soaks into the ground to become evian water before starting its slow journey through the glacial sediment.

200 years of relying on the climate to provide water for a single brand requires planning and strategic protection, especially as unpredictability becomes most predictable with our climate. Although it has never needed to rely on it, Evian only bottles 80% of the water that it captures in order to create a reserve for extreme events.

“The most important thing I have to do is to anticipate what’s going to happen in the future,” Cathy le Hec, Danone Europe’s Director of Water Resources and Environment, tells me. “Evian water is linked to this territory. You can’t relocate or offshore it.”

Farmers manage the majority of evian’s Impluvium. More than 30 years ago, evian created a cooperative for those farmers to work together with local authorities to govern the land with all parties at the table. “Our objective is to support farmers and encourage them to demonstrate that protecting the environment is also a way for them to prepare for the future,” le Hec says.

“Farmers in the past wanted to use chemicals because there was no odor…[manure] can be used as fertilizer, but the problem is the smell,” she continues. “We set up a methane production site, so we now produce biogas, which is used as renewable energy. Now we can use [the manure] as fertilizer and spread it in the field with no odor.”

10% of the Evian territory consists of wetlands, which filters nearly a third of all the rainwater before it travels deeper into the sand. The watershed among Impluvium grounds has been recognized by UNESCO and the Ramsar Convention, which focuses on biodiversity, as a Wetland of International Importance, the first water brand to gain the recognition. “Protecting these wetlands is crucial for us,” le Hec says. “The survival of these wetlands demonstrates that we’ve managed to strike the right balance between the presence of farms and the quality of water.”

Evian was founded in 1826 after the discovery that this very mineral water helped townspeople cure their kidney diseases after drinking it daily. The mineral water, since its inception, naturally picks up magnesium, calcium and silica from the alpine rock that it filters through.

“The rocks do all the work,” le Hec says.

French law mandates the lack of any human interaction to label as ‘natural mineral water.’ There are only two sources of evian water, its original ‘cachet,’ or Cachat Spring, which is still active in Évian-les-Bains, and the stainless steel pipes that empty the water after its 15 year journey into its bottling plant.

“Even the bottle was designed so that nothing changes the composition of water,” le Hec details. “For me, it’s more than water. It’s a concentrate of nature.”

Becoming a globally recognized brand is a feat evian has accomplished by inserting itself into several different aspects of each succeeding generation of modern life, including fine art, music, sports and its advertising case studies all focused on the vitality of its mineral water.

As Antoine Portmann, General Manager of Danone Waters, tells me, “we are disciplined on the fundamentals of the brand, starting by the protection of the resource.”

It’s what makes evian simultaneously a global company as well as a hyper-local one.

“Mineral water started here 1,200 years ago and now we find it on tables around the world,” de Saint-Affrique says. “We source ideas from wherever they are born and see how we can magnify, adapt and scale them around the world.”

Danone specifically noticed in the mid-2010’s how Americans became increasingly drawn to carbonated and sparkling beverages, leading evian to create its first fork in the road from still water, producing its lightly sparkling water, sold exclusively in large glass bottles in hospitality venues across the US. Evian is just about to start scaling its sparkling water throughout parts of Europe.

“The two markets that are leading the way on what the future of beverage will be about are China and the US,” Portmann says. “We take the US market as inspiration for reinventing the brand, exactly what we did with sparkling.”

Evian is much more ubiquitous in Europe than the US, where it’s seen as more of a premium water. Chefs and restaurateurs often prefer evian as their water of choice because of its balanced pH that neutralizes the palate. It launched in the States in the 1980’s in Miami and leans more heavily here into dining.

That’s also part of the reason why it tested its sparkling water first, and exclusively, in the US for more than a decade. “[Carbonation] enhances the taste of your meal…it’s exactly the same product, the same source, the same mineral composition, but just adding a slight touch of sparklingness,” Portmann says. ”It celebrates our close proximity with fine dining and gastronomy with a little bit of a French touch.”

Glass bottles of evian are expected to ramp up across the US, and aluminum cans are expected to roll out in 2027.

Former partnerships with tennis stars like Maria Sharapova to its newest faces of excellence like Carlos Alcaraz along with tournaments like Wimbledon, which embrace tradition, highlight evian’s transition and adaptation throughout global culture. “Tennis is one of the sports that allows you to live the longest,” Portmann says. “We’re always combining elements that remain the same and elements that bring some newness.”

Evian also makes its water seem as if it’s simple yet abstract, like modern art. Its line of limited edition bottles gives it an aura of being a collectors item that one would want to display akin to sports memorabilia, including its 200th anniversary bottle that features balloon dog sculptures by artist Jeff Koons.

“Whatever you do today will have an impact for the next generation,” de Saint-Affrique says. “I am benefitting from the work that they did decades ago.”