Primo Brands opened a new, roughly 200,000-square-foot factory for The Mountain Valley in Hot Springs, Garland County, Arkansas, on Wednesday, giving the storied spring water brand its first all-new production facility since the company formed through a 2024 merger. The plant adds a retail high-speed production line and two large-format lines, along with logistics and warehouse space, at a moment when demand for the green-bottled water has surged.
A Brand 150 Years in the Making Gets Room to Grow
According to bevnet.com, the new factory adds much-needed capacity for a premium spring water brand experiencing strong consumer demand, with growth attributed primarily to word-of-mouth sharing in recent years. The Mountain Valley has sourced its spring and sparkling water from the Ouachita Mountains since 1871 and has been part of the Hot Springs community for more than 150 years, the outlet reports. The water, known for its natural minerality and crisp taste, filters through sandstone and shale in those mountains before reaching bottles that have become a fixture at restaurants and fine dining events across the country.
The facility held its grand opening less than a year after breaking ground on October 28, 2025, according to the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record. Its opening-day lineup includes one retail high-speed line and two large-format lines. The plant is expected to start producing five-gallon bottles in late November, with another product line coming online in late January or early February, the Sentinel-Record reports.
Sixty Thousand Bottles an Hour
U.S. Rep. Bruce Westerman toured the new line and put its output in blunt terms, telling the Sentinel-Record that “sixty thousand bottles of water an hour comes off this line.” Mountain Valley is already carried in more than 4,000 Walmart stores nationwide, the Sentinel-Record reports. Westerman also said Mountain Valley Spring Water has been a pillar of the Hot Springs community for over 150 years, according to Talk Business & Politics. The brand reaches customers directly through 2.5- or 5-gallon glass jugs, according to ProFood World, which also notes the brand is known for its signature green glass bottle, per Talk Business & Politics.
Primo Brands Chairman and CEO Eric Foss said the brand's consumer loyalty drove its growth and that the company invested strategically to meet accelerating demand, a message echoed by state leaders at the ribbon-cutting. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the new factory would help more Americans enjoy the water and create more local jobs, while Greater Hot Springs Chamber of Commerce Interim President and CEO Cole McCaskill said the factory would give more local residents a role in making the brand and create local jobs.
Riding a National Wave for Bottled Water
The Hot Springs expansion lands amid a broader shift in American drinking habits. Water has been the country's top packaged beverage by volume for 11 consecutive years and outsold all other packaged beverages by volume in 2025, overtaking soda, according to the Beverage Marketing Corporation figures cited by bevnet.com. Bottled water accounted for 46% of U.S. refreshment beverage volume in 2025, per Beverage Marketing Corporation data cited by ProFood World, with premium water in particular emerging as one of the category's fastest-growing segments as consumers choose brands based on source, taste and quality.
Primo Brands says it owns two of the five fastest-growing premium water brands in the United States, The Mountain Valley and Saratoga, as it leans on a portfolio that also includes Poland Spring, Pure Life, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ice Mountain, Ozarka, Zephyrhills, Primo Water, Sparkletts, Splash Refresher and AC+ion. The company distributes its products in every U.S. state and Canada through a vertically integrated, coast-to-coast network reaching more than 200,000 retail outlets, and it runs an exchange business serving roughly 26,500 retail locations alongside about 23,500 self-service refill stations.
For Hot Springs, the factory represents a direct link between a 19th-century spring and a modern manufacturing line built to keep pace with national thirst for premium bottled water. As the new lines ramp up production through the winter, the city's long association with Mountain Valley now comes with a bigger footprint to match its growing customer base.
