SM Jaleel confirms bid for CAL bottled water

SM Jaleel & Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed has con­firmed that it made a bid to sup­ply bot­tled wa­ter to State-owned Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), but says dis­cus­sions are still un­der­way with the air­line, al­though CAL has al­ready con­firmed that it has award­ed the com­pa­ny a $405,600 con­tract.

In a re­lease on Tues­day, the bev­er­age man­u­fac­tur­er said it sub­mit­ted a quo­ta­tion to CAL on Ju­ly 2, fol­low­ing an in­vi­ta­tion to bid for the sup­ply of bot­tled wa­ter, and that the pro­cure­ment process is con­tin­u­ing in ac­cor­dance with reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments.

The com­pa­ny said the pro­posed arrange­ment in­volves the sup­ply of its Oa­sis Wa­ter brand for a one-year pe­ri­od.

The con­fir­ma­tion comes days af­ter the Sun­day Guardian re­port­ed that CAL had dis­con­tin­ued the use of Blue Wa­ters, which had been served on its flights for more than 15 years.

Ac­cord­ing to CAL’s on­line pro­cure­ment plat­form, the air­line award­ed the bot­tled wa­ter con­tract to SM Jaleel on Ju­ly 8.

For a brief pe­ri­od fol­low­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of Blue Wa­ters, CAL served Dasani, a brand pro­duced by a sub­sidiary of the Co­ca-Co­la Com­pa­ny, be­fore mov­ing to im­ple­ment the arrange­ment with SM Jaleel.

SM Jaleel said in the me­dia re­lease that its re­la­tion­ship with CAL spans more than two decades.

“We are proud of our more than twen­ty-year re­la­tion­ship with Caribbean Air­lines and ap­pre­ci­ate the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tin­ue sup­port­ing the air­line,” the com­pa­ny said.

“As dis­cus­sions progress re­gard­ing the for­mal sup­ply arrange­ments for Oa­sis Wa­ter, we re­main com­mit­ted to de­liv­er­ing the high­est stan­dards of qual­i­ty, re­li­a­bil­i­ty and ser­vice that have char­ac­terised our part­ner­ship over the years.”

The com­pa­ny said Oa­sis Wa­ter is man­u­fac­tured at its fa­cil­i­ties in Trinidad and To­ba­go and that it main­tains in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised cer­ti­fi­ca­tions, in­clud­ing those as­so­ci­at­ed with the In­ter­na­tion­al Bot­tled Wa­ter As­so­ci­a­tion (IB­WA), NSF In­ter­na­tion­al, the Safe Qual­i­ty Food (SQF) Pro­gramme, and reg­is­tra­tion with the Unit­ed States Food and Drug Ad­min­is­tra­tion (FDA).

“These in­ter­na­tion­al­ly recog­nised stan­dards re­flect SMJ’s un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to pro­duc­ing safe, high-qual­i­ty bev­er­ages that con­sis­tent­ly meet and ex­ceed the ex­pec­ta­tions of con­sumers and com­mer­cial part­ners through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, the wider Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets,” the com­pa­ny said.

The change in sup­pli­er fol­lowed CAL’s de­ci­sion on Ju­ly 1 to dis­con­tin­ue its arrange­ment with Blue Wa­ters.

Blue Wa­ters was found­ed 27 years ago by lo­cal busi­ness­man Do­minic Hadeed, who, along with his wife, was de­tained by po­lice on June 24. Fol­low­ing their ini­tial ar­rest, the cou­ple was served with Pre­ven­tive De­ten­tion Or­ders un­der the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, ex­tend­ing their de­ten­tion with­out im­me­di­ate for­mal charges be­ing laid.

CAL is ma­jor­i­ty-owned by the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment, which held 88.06 per cent of the air­line as of Jan­u­ary 2024, while the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment owned the re­main­ing 11.94 per cent.