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When the deal was done the farmer said to me “with this land
I’m giving you two treasures. The first is a fountain of pure
natural water. The second is that you will be the neighbor of Mr.
Londoño`s ten beautiful daughters. It was with these words
in my mind that I enthusiastically set about constructing my farm
in paradise.
I christen my farm “Villa Monica” and to celebrate its
competition I threw a grand party.
During the course of the day we ran out of drinking water. One of
my party guests suggested that” we should drink some of the
water that flows from the beautiful spring next to your cabin”.
I liked the idea of my guests drinking my water but I hadn’t
yet sampled myself and as such as I was wary of the quality. However,
I promised my guests that will get the water professionally examined
so that perhaps next time we would be able to drink it.
So I traveled to Medellin with several samples from the spring and
took them to scientist Dr. Martha Luz Misas and Dr. Jorge Ferguson.
They performed physical, chemical and a bacteriological test on
the water.
The results which came back exceeded my wildest expectation. “A
bacterium free, natural mineral water that meets the world’s
health organization’s criteria for “excellent”
drinking water” Dr. Ferguson himself concluded that “water
of this quality is rarely found in the Americas”.
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With this
stunning result I felt I had to embark upon the titanic project
of creating a company that packs and sells natural mineral water.
I want into business with a friend of mine and together we raised
the funds to build and buy the equipment that allowed us to hygienically
extract water from the spring. Store it and pack it. The company
name at this was “PENAGUA ltd.”. Unfortunally due
to disagreements with my partner the decision was taken to dissolve
our partnership.
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However, despite our best efforts, the financial situation at
the time in addition to trying to compete in the market with more
established names meant that we had to take the difficult decision
to sell the company to an investor who had the enthusiasm, the
money and the know-how to take the business to the next level.
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As it is “RODUCTOS AGUA DE LA PEÑA” retains
a family to it, and thanks to sacrifice and incredibly hard work
from the top to bottom of the company we have been able to take
our product across borders and now agua de la Peña is Colombian’s
number one mineral water exporter.
None of this success would have been possible without the cooperation
of all our employees, their families or the support of the people
of san Luis, and we will be forever grateful for their help in
this beautiful project.
Sincerely
Hernan Dario Lopez Vasquez
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