Belu is the sustainable water brand, which provides bottled and filtered water to hotels around the world. Belu reinvests 100 per cent of its profits to support clean water and sanitation and has granted £5.8 million to Water Aid since 2011, helping nearly 392,000 people in some of the world’s poorest communities.
Domestically, Belu’s impact partnerships focus on nature-based solutions to improve water quality, restore habitats, and support UK ecosystems. Sold in the UK, France, Hong Kong, and Singapore, Belu partners with all hotel brands from Premier Inn to luxury hotels like Le Manoir and Mandarin Oriental, through to corporate clients like Goldman Sachs and GSK. Editor Felicity Cousins caught up with CEO Natalie Campbell MBE to discuss circularity, what hotels want, water logistics and how Belu is making big changes in the new year.
When did you become CEO of Belu?
NC: I joined Belu three weeks before the government shut down the country, because of the pandemic, in March 2020. I thought I was coming into a financially stable business with £6 million turnover and £1 million given to Water Aid and then pretty much over night the business disappeared.
What happened next?
NC: It showed me the resilience of the hospitality sector because everyone was so open and talking about the challenges and what they needed. At Belu we had the gift of time and we could think about what to do to ensure our financial sustainability. Belu actually launched in Hong Kong towards the end of 2020, with Swire Group, and then provided filtration for Mandarin Oriental. We only have our filtration product over there, we don’t export our mineral water. [Which is bottled at source in Powys, Wales].
In Hong Kong we installed the filtration systems and services and we launched tonics and mixers too – it was the first year we were not profitable and our business promise at the time was to give 100 per cent of our profit to Water Aid. It was a Baptism of fire and we’ve come out the other side much stronger.
Are your plastic bottles recyclable?
NC: Yes. What most people don’t realise is our PET bottles have the lowest carbon footprint of any packaging. When you see hotels talking about their wonderful sustainable Tetra and wonderful sustainable cans – the carbon footprint of cans are really high. And we don’t recycle Tetra in the UK so those products are shipped out…. We are looking at whether or not we will move into cans in the future partly because of ERP and because glass is a heavier product. Even though our bottle is lightweight it is still heavier than most other materials and that has a detrimental impact on our business for delivery.
So the further away you deliver Belu bottles the more of an issue weight becomes?
NC: There isn’t a way around that and I think this is an odd statement for a business to say, but we don’t like sending our glass bottles that far. Scotland for example, there is no need – there are more than enough water brands in Scotland!
Since the pandemic have you noticed hotels are more interested in having sustainable suppliers?
NC: It varies – yes sustainability and provenance go together because most people in the industry know we are a British brand and our bottles are made in the UK [Belu’s PET and glass bottles are made in Chester]. The majority of the industry’s glass bottles come from further afield like Turkey – so inherently their product is cheaper because they are buying much cheaper bottles. We choose to make ours in the UK and hotel partners which have our mineral water absolutely buy into the British brand and the provenance. The ones who know about Water Aid stay with us because they know there is an additional impact in the way we invest in nature-based solutions.
Are more hotels moving to filtration rather than bottles?
NC: We do have a lot of hotels moving to filtration as they want to remove the excess packaging and understand their own water footprint. The technology we have on our filtration systems allows them to understand how many litres they have poured and the right time to service their machines – it enables them to be better operators.
You can serve still and sparkling, hot and ambient water at a hotel with the filtration system, and then bottles which can be re-filled?
NC: Exactly, that’s what we are seeing – hotels are not just offering it as a service during dining, but also having in-room options. Branded bottles can go in rooms and can be refilled from our filtration systems.
The filtration process includes the water being passed through a filter made from coconut shells, before being chilled, carbonated and dispensed from a tap. How often does the filter have to be changed?
NC: It depends on which of the filters they have but they are all very sustainable. Brita owns the majority of the patents around filters and it is very open about its sustainability journey and all of its filters are recyclable. Every six months is probably the average time, but with the technology we are adding to our systems we can see whether a filter would need to be changed more or less often. Even though it is a circular process, if you don’t need to change it then you might as well leave it a bit longer.
What questions do hotels ask on RFPs?
NC: Everyone wants to understand our environmental policy. The larger hotel groups want to know what we are doing around wellbeing and mental health and the range of other policies for being a good supplier. The smaller suppliers want to meet us and understand what we are doing for small hotel chains, what we are doing for Water Aid, how they can get involved, and to understand nature-based solutions. They want to know what it means when we say we are investing in cleaning waterways and canals.
And what does it mean?
NC: We work with The Rivers Trust, Thames21 and the Canal and River Trust to develop water stewardship projects. [According to The Rivers Trust, in 2024 only 14 per cent of rivers in England are considered to be in good health. This means that a vast majority of our rivers are in a declining state, affected by pollution, chemical runoff, and habitat disruption.]
We decided to do this because the carbon offset market is a Wild West and a lot of the projects weren’t sequestering any carbon out of the atmosphere. We wanted to have more localised projects where we were doing work to restore canals and getting biodiversity to return and have communities using the space. We did one project close to us in Wales and we have just completed another one on the River Ravensbourne, and another in Medway.
These projects are much more tangible than a carbon offset project.
NC: And you can get closer to it instead of paying for a project – which could be a great project –but it could be thousands of miles away. You can pop down to Medway and see what’s happening. We are also working with the Blue Marine Foundation on a kelp project in Ravensbourne around marine conservation. [Blue Marine Foundation has a mission to see at least 30 per cent of the world’s ocean under effective protection by 2030 and the other 70 per ent managed in a responsible way].
What I love about being the CEO of Belu is that because we give all our profits away we can invest in the sorts of projects other businesses wouldn’t. The project is an innovation and we don’t know if it will absolutely deliver. They are trying to create a biodiversity credit [to develop new models of sustainable financing for marine conservation]. We don’t know if it will deliver, but let’s figure it out because if it does then that’s a game changer.
We are a social enterprise and our primary objectives are to deliver SDG 6, 12 and 13. People can see where our money goes and for me it’s about just doing the work and being transparent about what you are doing. We are open source with what we are doing to help other people.
Who are your main competitors and how do you stay ahead of the curve?
NC: I never get antsy about seeing another British brand or filtration provider because it’s a short supply chain and generally if they are doing something in the UK people are moving to sustainable factories, and they are run on renewables, so that is good.
From a competitor perspective we are seeing people look at water and think “I can jump into that market and make a lot of money, because if Belu can give Water Aid a £1million then that’s £1 million we could have as a dividend, so there must be money to be made.'”
We regularly see people entering the market saying the right things and basically trying to make a quick buck with a really cheap product – sometimes they enter the market and they undercut everyone and then they realise its really difficult because you have to deliver on time, and you have to ensure you have bottles and labels, and all of this other stuff and usually they crash and burn within a year.
Belu has been around for 20 years and there is a confidence across the team that from a supply chain perspective and operational perspective we can deliver. Even though filtration is relatively new in comparison to how long we’ve had the drinks side of the businesses, operationally our service is best in class, based on what our customers are telling us. So yes, there might be lots of competition, but the reality is that in order to stay serving the hotel industry year-in, year-out, you have to be good.
Are your delivery trucks electric?
NC: We use third party haulage so we don’t have our own fleet, but the fleet is electric for our London deliveries. The majority of the fleet, with the big pallets, no one has electric fleets for these because the infrastructure is not there. If anyone electrifies their fleet it will be Amazon because no one else can electrify a fleet at that size.
What could the industry have done better this year?
NC: We could be honest. It’s a very nice industry and I challenge the businesses that I speak with to be honest about what their buying priorities are. If they are buying based on price then just say so. Don’t then join a panel talking about how ‘sustainability’ and ‘provenance’ and ‘British’ are your top three internal values, if ultimately as soon as we open the cupboard door everything is bought on price, and it’s all imported because you got a better price.
As soon as we are honest about that then the market can adapt. I’m not saying they are wrong, because they are businesses at the end of the day, but I’m saying just be honest.
For us as a business we spent a long time being very nice and we’ve never called out any other brand or operator for not walking the walk. People will see a very different sort of Belu next year.
We will be spotlighting our customers, our partners and our supply chain a lot more to say “this is what it means to be a sustainable business and this is what it means be part of a movement of people really doing good.”
Is that a response to greenwashing and the Green Claims Directive?
NC: Yes very much so, but also the fact the end consumer doesn’t really know. Although we will have the directive, there will still be people that figure out a way to work around it. And that’s not fair for the suppliers that are doing the work.
Sustainability in the hotel industry isn’t a trend, it is what is expected. The hotels we have as customers, who do sustainability and provenance well, are generally close to full occupancy. The ones who don’t do it well are generally the ones which also don’t put customer service first, and that impacts on occupancy.
It’s really interesting being on this side and seeing the hotels that are doing well, and making the correlation to the ones that care. The word ‘care’ is really important because they are the ones which care about everything – every small detail.”
Felicity Cousins spoke to Natalie Campbell MBE in early November 2024.