Everett Mayor and City Council Surprised by County Executive’s Announcement of a Water Bottling Plant Coming to Everett

The Everett City Council and Mayor Ray Stephanson expressed great surprise during their Wednesday night City Council meeting over Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon’s announcement of a water bottling plant coming to Everett later this year. Click the audio button above to hear Mayor Stephanson explain that it is not, in fact, a done deal.

Several Everett City Council members seemed somewhat unhappy with Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon making the announcement during his state of the county address today. (You can see their reaction on Everett TV. Just click on the February 9th City Council Meeting.)

Today, I have the distinct pleasure of announcing another successful partnership and a new investment in our community. We are joined today by Dave Markle, the senior VP of Evergreen Bottling, a beverage company soon to be locating in Snohomish County. The company is expecting to start construction on a 100,000-square-foot bottling facility by mid-year. The facility will house multiple lines of state of the art bottling equipment. They will produce a variety of water-based beverages for domestic and international consumption. From its start, Evergreen Bottling is expecting to ship more than 15 million bottles per month from the Port of Everett to Tokyo, Japan. Their business plan calls for rapid expansion to 50 million bottles once their contracts with other international markets are finalized. The company will initially hire 50 to 60 employees, not including construction workers, and is expecting to expand to more than 120 employees within two years. Future plans also include the company coordinating with the County’s new Grower’s Alliance to supply farm fresh fruits and other produce to create a new line of flavored waters and juices.
One of the biggest benefits of this company is its direct ties to major distribution companies in Asia. It will help open the doors to greater investment into Snohomish County by Asian businesses for specialty product and value-added food exports. Some of these may even one day be developed right at the commercial kitchen of our new Farmers’ Market.

The Port of Everett also put out a Press Release today regarding the proposed bottling plant.