Thieves are in high spirits after a daring raid saw them make off with 30,000 liters of the finest iceberg water from a Canadian vodka company. The shocked CEO wondered whether they mistook water for the clear alcohol.

Prized for its high purity and used in luxury goods from cosmetics to premium spirits, the water was siphoned off from a storage facility in the coastal town of Port Union, Newfoundland last weekend.

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Intended for use by the Iceberg Vodka company, the water was enough to fill 150,000 bottles of the winter warmer and has a street value between CAD $9,000 and $12,000, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Expressing his shock at the theft, Iceberg’s CEO David Meyers told CBC News that the theft caught the company completely by surprise.

“We store it in secure tanks and we never, ever would have expected anyone to take such a quantity of water,” he said.

Ruling out the possibility that the liquid simply evaporated or escaped from its container via a leak, Meyers assured that the water was always kept under “very good care” and monitored by employees regularly from Monday to Friday.

However, when employees returned to work after the weekend, they discovered no trace of the water finding just empty tanks, leading Meyers to suggest that the mysterious gang “knew what they were doing”.

The high value of the water stems from the laborious process involved in harvesting it from Icebergs stemming from Greenland. Taken in late spring when chunks float close to Newfoundland and Labrador, they pose a danger to those harvesting the ice as the bergs can roll over with little warning.

Once harvested and melted however, the water becomes a highly prized commodity and is exported across the globe. Cases of bottled iceberg water can fetch hundreds of dollars.

However, one employee at an iceberg water company told the Guardian newspaper that the water was likely contaminated in the getaway, flushing any potential profits down the drain. “Jesus, what are they going to do with it?” he asked.

And what if the thieves thought the clear liquid pilfered from the warehouse was in fact a lifetime vodka supply? Meyers suggests they’d be disappointed joking that “If they did, they’re going to be thinking that vodka is pretty weak”.

“I'd be surprised, but who knows what people are thinking when they come in and take something like that?” he added.

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It’s the first time such a heist has been attempted, however, Canadian thieves have been previously involved in a wide variety of harebrained schemes to steal unusual items.

Over the Christmas period, 1,200 pounds of lobster was stolen from pens in Nova Scotia, while in 2017 the infamous “blueberry bandit” made off with CAD$100,000 worth of berries and other fruit.

And in the perhaps the most Canadian of all the capers: 2016 saw three men convicted after stealing approximately CAD$12 million in maple syrup from a Quebec warehouse between 2011 and 2012.

They replaced the thick syrup drained from the warehouse barrels with water.





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