“Maintain the human touch in business. It will only increase in value”: Natalie Campbell MBE, Belu Water

“We exist to prove there is a better way to do business, that we could do more than make money and help solve some of the world’s problems too. Water is such a challenge for so many communities,” says Natalie Campbell MBE, who has been co-CEO of Belu Water since 2020.

However, 2025 will put the drinks business and social enterprise through the biggest set of challenges it has ever faced. The ripple effect of incoming regulation coupled with the higher cost of employment has driven the business to rethink its plans.

“Things have been pretty wild in hospitality over the past five years to say the least, but we came out of the pandemic with a bullish growth plan,” says Campbell.

Water for good

The privately backed company supplies British mineral water and filtered still and sparking water to workplaces and the UK hotel, restaurant and catering sectors. And since 2011, as a champion of the conscious consumer movement, where environment and society can benefit through considered buying decisions, Belu has given 100% of its net profit to WaterAid, a charity that works globally to provide access to clean water. Since the collaboration began, that figure has totalled £5.8m.”

Belu also aims to have the lowest carbon footprint possible. Created as an alternative to imported mineral water brands who transport filled bottles at high environmental cost, Belu sources its water from Mid-Wales and bottles it in the UK. Packaging is another point of difference. Belu uses lightweight ethical glass made using a minimum of 40% recycled content, and 100% recycled plastic bottles.

“The UK is the leader in sustainable glass production,” says Campbell. “We’ve worked closely with a manufacturer to push the boundaries of responsible production – we’ve taken as much weight as possible out of the bottle, trialled using biofuels to produce products with upwards of 85% recycled glass and by 2030 our supply partner will launch innovative hydrogen-powered furnaces to make the process zero carbon. Manufacturing our bottles in the UK is more expensive than if we bought them from Turkey or Poland and shipped into the UK but it is the right thing to do, UK-made is lower in emissions, creates local employment and drives innovation.” 

Ironically the key challenge for the business this year lies in incoming packaging regulation. The Extended Producer Responsibility tax comes into effect in April and is designed to push the cost of recycling from local authorities back to the companies who are generating the packaging in the first place. 

“Though sound in principle, the plan has unintended consequences. As the system uses weight as a metric, anyone using glass as packaging will have to pay more, yet glass is one of the most widely recycled materials in the UK. If you are more sustainable, using 100% recycled materials or refillable packaging, there should be a different tax system — incentivising sustainability is a growth driver. My concern is it will shift everyone out of UK-made sustainable glass, into imported packaging or virgin plastic and aluminium,” she says.

Tough decisions require transparency

Such is the extent of the disruption to business plans that the tax is having, Belu is moving into a space Campbell thought it would never consider — aluminium cans.

“Aluminium recycling infrastructure is not as good as it should be in this country, in comparison to the EU or the US. As a consequence, we have always said we would not use it as an ‘on-the-go’ packaging option as it contributes to exported waste from the UK. However the new tax is forcing us to consider diversifying our product range in that direction otherwise we could lose a significant part of our business to less ethical brands,” Campbell explains.

Crucially, the team plans to stick to a founding principle of transparency and will be laying out the facts about aluminium packaging on its cans. “Our customers want to know the facts so they can make informed decisions, and we won’t shy away from the uncomfortable truth here”.

Tech builds value in human interactions

Campbell is diligent about researching the impact of everything Belu does, and balancing that out with the potential benefits, including its use of emerging technology such as AI.

“Using AI could bring efficiencies to meetings or reduce tender creation from three days to thirty minutes – but what are the carbon and wider environmental consequences? I’m not saying we won’t do it, but we need the facts first. It’s all about research and balance.”

Campbell applied these same principles when she first joined the organisation and was reviewing its carbon offsetting activities. Concluding the approach in place did not sequester carbon effectively, Belu stopped offsetting in 2021 and instead chose to fund nature-based solutions, such as its partnership with the Rivers Trust and the Blue Marine Foundation. It's that tangible impact that remains key to the business activity.

“Consumers will spend their money with businesses that care and so as much as we're being incentivised to focus on price, price, price, those that can confidently talk about product provenance and the relationship that they have with their farmers or the well-being of their teams — those are the businesses that consumers will go back to time and again.”

The power of the human connection extends to technology in Campbell’s view too. She believes that the extent to which hospitality and retail sectors use technology to replace one on one interactions is going to have a profound impact on customer loyalty, especially at the premium end of the sectors.

“In a world where people spend so much time online, having a great interaction with a human, whether that's over your coffee or booking into a hotel or buying a red pepper — that is going to have so much more value,” she says.

“Maintain the human touch. It will only increase in value.”