March could be a busy month for water bottlers in Hawke's Bay - with production expected to recommence at one plant, and steps taken in the creation of another.
Water bottling has been a contentious issue in Hawke's Bay, heating up after the Havelock North gastro outbreak in August, and water tensions following drought-like conditions over the summer.
Currently, there are 11 consented water bottling takes from the Heretaunga aquifer, but to date only four of those consents had been or are being used.
This month it is expected that one of these consent holders, NZ Miracle Water, will recommence production at their Hastings plant after stopping over the summer. Another company, One Pure International, is expected to commission their Awatoto water bottling plant.
This was stated in a paper to be presented at the Regional Transport Committee this week.
Miracle Water were remaining tight-lipped about these plans - both Miracle Water director Trevor Taylor and manager at the Hastings plant Tony Chen declined to comment.
A regional council spokeswoman said she could not answer questions about production recommencing as their role was to monitor the water take consent.
"The company is not obliged to tell us when they start or stop production. Our role is to ensure they stay within the water take limits of their consent," she said.
"There is an alarm which tells us if they go over their limit and that is when we would intervene."
In January last year a shipment of Miracle Water products was sent back to New Zealand from China - the water's classification as artesian meant it had strict purity requirements.
Documents received by Hawke's Bay Today also suggested the company undertook a restructure late last year which resulted in 10 positions being made redundant. At the time Mr Chen said he was not in a position to answer any questions on this.
The Transport Committee paper also noted under 'One Pure water bottling' that their plant was expected to be commissioned in March or April.
In 2013 the company purchased a 4800sq m Awatoto building beside SH2. They were granted consent by the regional council to extract up to 7.8 million litres of water a week from a bore on the site - or up to 405.6m litres a year.
In 2014 the company was granted consent by the Napier City Council to "establish a water bottling plant" at the site, which allowed changes to take place at a site of significance to Maori, including access and car parking.
Converting the industrial building on the site was expected to start in early 2015, and be completed late last year, however it remains unfinished.
A number of requests for comment were made to several One Pure representatives this week, however no response was forthcoming.
In its original application to build the plant, One Pure said it would be used to fill, package, pack and dispatch into shipping containers, up to 32,000 bottles of water per hour, and would operate up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
During its peak production day shift, 14 staff would work at the plant, the application said.