Driving north from Sydney, besides the man-made edifices of the city, what greets the traveler are endless stretches of sandstone topography. The highway itself was drilled straight through boulders. This kind of rock can actually be the storage place of treasure-when water is filtered through the sandstone, it yields mineral water of the highest quality, for which the Central Coast is famous.

Mark Suen, who runs a computer company in Sydney, bought a piece of land here, and is getting ready to turn water into gold, by starting a mineral water enterprise.

On this 45-acre "territory," Suen has already built a large-scale plant encompassing nearly 2000 square meters. In the back is an orchard filled with old peach trees, whose buds are on the verge of opening. In a while, when they blossom, it is sure to be a lovely sight.

Walking on the small path that runs among the trees, Mark Suen seems ambitious and self-assured. When the subject turns to why he immigrated and started a business in Australia, he half-jokingly recalls that when he was living in Taipei, he was busy all day with his computer company, and he had not thought at all about emigrating. Then one day his wife said she wanted to emigrate to Australia, and he replied, "Whatever you want to do is okay, as long as you don't bother me." He didn't expect that his wife would really start the paperwork. On one occasion, she would tell him to sign a document. At a different time, she would tell him to stamp his chop on something else, and he would do what he was told. One day out of the blue, his wife told him that the immigration work was complete. Then he was full of surprise, saying, "What? You really want to leave?"

Whoever gets the resources wins

So far from his home, what would he do to make a living? That was simple. Taiwan's personal computers are first-rate, and their prices very reasonable. All he needed to do was import and sell them, and getting by should be no problem.

But Mark Suen was not satisfied to stop at that point. "In any country, manufacturing is the foundation. It makes the biggest contribution to the local community, and earns the greatest amount of respect." He felt that most Chinese immigrants got involved in trading. Now he ought to enter into manufacturing.

It occurred to Suen to bottle mineral water because of the experiences he had in Taiwan. The price Taiwan has had to pay for economic development is constantly worsening pollution. Clean water resources are already nearly impossible to find. He believes, "In the future, whoever can get hold of the resources will win." One time when he was chatting with a friend, he suddenly had the notion to bottle mineral water.

When he looked into it in greater detail, he determined that in Australia, where the wage rate is very high, it is impossible to undertake labor-intensive production. He could only take advantage of the natural resources and the reputation of the place. "Australia has an image of being very clean and pollution-free. It's easy to convince people to buy your mineral water." He explains, "On the other hand, if you were to bottle mineral water in mainland China, no matter how good the water quality or how high the hygienic standards, I'm afraid no one would dare to buy it."

And given the fact that right now Taiwan even imports water from Canada and France, by comparison, Australia is fairly close, and there is room for growth.

"Mineral water is a business that will last for a hundred years. If you stay in for a long time, you'll win. Pollution all over the world is only getting more and more serious. You can see, the price of mineral water all over the world is getting higher every year. Now it's only a question of succeeding quickly or succeeding slowly."

After he decided to bottle mineral water, he went to the water resources bureau of New South Wales for information and learned which sites had suitable water resources. After he knew where to look, he went to buy land for himself. "At the time, I thought it would be really easy-just put mineral water in a bottle and sell it." Little did Suen expect that he would run up against countless obstacles along the way.

Suing the government

In the past, there had been quite a number of mineral water bottlers in the local area, but none of them had had a license. They had only been local farmers who had used traditional business methods. When Mark Suen decided to embark on this line of business, he decided to do it right. He bought some land and made plans to build a modern bottling plant.

But his request for a plant license was rejected by the municipal government, because the local land was a protected area, and putting up factories was not allowed.

Suen had already purchased the land, so he could not turn back. He could only press on to the end. He took the municipal government to court, his argument being that "producing mineral water is agriculture, not manufacturing." His lawsuit went to the highest court, and he finally came out victorious.

He spent two years just in building the plant, and he did it according to environmental and health standards. Suen describes bottling mineral water as "a war against germs." "Water is more complicated than most fruit juices. You can't add any preservatives; you can only throw all your efforts into the hardware."

In terms of hardware, Suen saved himself a good many steps in the learning process through personal connections in Taiwan. He is good friends with the boss of Taiwan's Young Energy Source bottling company, and he was able to get hold of the whole set of Young Energy Source plant blueprints. From Italy, he imported the main machine, which washes and fills the bottles and puts on the caps. For disinfecting, he imported an ozone generator from Germany. And from the United States, he imported filters with gaps of only 0.2 micrometers, so fine that most bacteria and filtrable viruses can simply not pass through.

The machines themselves were not complicated, but some problems of mechanical compatibility were the cause of no small mental grief. Suen would often drive in from Sydney to watch professional mechanics use computers to adjust the production line. The set of machines can make 120 1.5-liter bottles of mineral water per minute. Just recently, they began mass production.

"The mineral water business is not for making money right now. It's work to be passed on for the next generation. In the future, based on this water, I also want to make sports drinks and fruit juices."

Water has endless possibilities, and Mark Suen has unlimited hope.

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Mark Suen (center) was impressed by Australia's "pollution-free environment" and decided to export mineral water back to Taiwan. (photo by Hsueh Chi-kuang)