Cardiff Crown Court was told the water could have come from a spring at Ralph Searle’s farm in Carmarthenshire, or a tap at his factory in Blaenau Gwent.
Prosecutor Stephen Thomas said: “In August 2006, Ralph Searle entered into a contract with the Duke of Marlborough to bottle and distribute his natural spring water. He was also given the contract to print labels bearing the Blenheim trademark.
“The 18.9-litre bottles were filled, capped and sealed by employees on the Blenheim Palace estate. It was a significant contract – Searle paid the Duke £0.70 per bottle to distribute 100,000 bottles per year for offices.”
When more than 50 customers complained that the water in bottles at their offices had a “funny taste” compared to their usual Blenheim Mineral Spring Water, Searle’s response had been that the cause of the problem was “that the water had been bottled too soon”.
Trading Standards investigators raided Searle’s factory in Aberbeeg, near Newport, Gwent, to find ‘Blenheim’ bottles filled with tap water and water from his farm in the Black Mountains near Carmarthen, South Wales. The court heard the sodium and sulphate content in the water didn’t match the “high standards” of the Duke of Marlborough’s top of the range mineral water.
The court heard that Searle had told police that if bottles had been mislabelled, it was “unintentional”.
Judge Wynn Morgan said: “This state of affairs has arisen through what amounts to criminal negligence, organisation of his affairs and a complete lack of any checking that these bottles were going out and obtaining water where they were purported to be from. You obviously lived from day to day. You lived in some sort of world, Mr Searle, where normal and sensible business practices have no place.”
Searle’s defence counsel, Robert Buckland, insisted he was no ‘Derek Trotter’, referring to the wheeler-dealer character played by David Jason in the BBC comedy Only Fools and Horses, and apologised to Cool Water’s clients on his behalf.
He said: “Comparisons between this defendant and some latter-day Derek Trotter character are wholly inappropriate. This was not a deliberate attempt to hoodwink customers, to pass water off as Blenheim water. This was negligence, incompetence if you like, that led to this state of affairs.”
Searle’s company, Cool Water Enterprises – which had a turnover of £1.2m from up to 3,000 customers – admitted the six similar charges brought under the Trade Descriptions Act. Searle pleaded guilty on the basis that he was negligent in mixing up the water supplies and there was “no criminal intent.”
Judge David Wyn Morgan fined him £500 on each of the charges – giving him a year to pay the total of £6,000. Searle was also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £65,495.77. The court heard his own costs were more than £30,000.
An official statement from the British Water Cooler Association said: “While Blenheim Palace Natural Mineral Water is a BWCA member, Cool Water Enterprises is not and has never been a BWCA Member. All BWCA Members adhere to strict legislation, BWCA Codes of Practice and annual audits that inspect bottling plants and distribution depots. This news item highlights the need for customers to only source their water cooler solutions from a BWCA Member.”
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