Vodka firm loses valuable iceberg water in apparent heist

A Canadian vodka distiller has lost 30,000 litres of valuable iceberg water in what appears to be a heist.

Iceberg Vodka CEO David Meyers says he is mystified as to who - or why - someone would have stolen the water.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say someone made away with the liquid - enough to fill a tractor-trailer tanker - from a warehouse in the historic community of Port Union, Newfoundland.

The water is valued at between C$9,000 ($6,775; £5,200) and C$12,000.

The CEO of the Newfoundland-based distiller told the BBC that the water was discovered missing on Monday after their facility manager found one of the tanks had been completely drained over the weekend.

Mr Meyers said it would have taken "a bit of work" to have been able to access the tank and remove the water, which was secured behind a locked gate and door.

The water is insured but the company is only able to harvest it in the spring from the ice giants that appear annually on Newfoundland and Labrador's coast along the famed "iceberg alley".

"We only have one crack at doing an iceberg harvest a year," he said. "It's just like a grape harvest for the wine industry."

More puzzling to the CEO is that he believes it would be no easy task to sell thousands of litres of stolen iceberg water.

"It's not like there's a black market for [it]," he said.

"So if someone is trying to offload 30,000 litres in a tanker or something, I would like to hear about that."

Some other local firms use the resource - a Newfoundland beauty brand that makes skincare and cosmetics products with glacial water, a local brewery and some companies that sell bottled "Berg" water.

But Mr Meyers said Newfoundland's iceberg water industry is relatively small and that everyone knows each other.

The Newfoundland RCMP are still investigating.