Nongfu Spring down to a trickle

It’s been a year since a Chinese water and beverage bottling company purchased commercial property in Nashua.

Not much more is known now than it was then about the company’s intentions for the 337,391-square-foot building on 23 acres at 80 Northwest Blvd., purchased Jan. 31, 2025 for $67 million by a subsidiary of Nongfu Spring, a giant Chinese bottled water and beverage company.

A product shot of Nongfu Spring water available from alibaba.com

“It’s been very silent from our perspective,” said John Boisvert, CEO of Pennichuck Water.

Boisvert would be among the first people to hear exactly the status of the facility because Pennichuck would be the supplier of water for its commercial bottling venture.

As with any new commercial customer, his engineers and those of the business would need to review the scale of the operation and its water needs to determine whether infrastructure improvements paid by the customer have to be made, according to Boisvert.

“We want to make sure that what they’re going to be asking for is achievable,” Boisvert said. “What’s typical is we encourage that due diligence and kind of work through it with them, because we want to make sure that they’re aware of what they’re going to have to do.”

According to Boisvert, there’s been none of that due diligence to date with any one from Nongfu Spring, operating here as NF North America. The city of Nashua owns the Pennichuck Water Works.

Nashua Mayor Jim Donchess declined comment for this story. Comment was also sought — but not received — on the status of the project from Clayco, a Chicago-based construction company hired to do the build-out.

Among the questions: What is the current timeline for presentation of plans not only to Pennichuck but to any licensing and regulatory authorities in the state at the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Department of Environmental Services (DES)? Is the internal infrastructure work in fact ongoing at this point?

“We’re in the community, and you hear, third person, fourth person. Everybody has their theories about what’s going on,” Boisvert said.

Emails between the company and the DHHS, which has regulatory and licensing authority over a potential bottling operation, have been silent for several weeks.

The last substantial exchange, provided through a right-to-know request by NHBR, was in February between Rene Beaudoin, the city of Nashua’s then deputy health officer, and Charles Metcalf, with the DHHS’s food protection bureau, about a possible walkthrough of the site with Nongfu Spring’s China-based owner, Zhong Shanshan.

“They were supposed to reach out when the owner was going to be in town to schedule a walkthrough. They were hoping for around the 20th, but we have not heard anything from them,” wrote Beaudoin, who has since left the city’s employ for DES.

A lot of the email communication between Nongfu Spring and the state reflected a chicken-or-the-egg scenario of state officials wanting to see designs, layouts and specifications for the bottling plant, while Clayco project engineers were looking for state guidance on regulations so that it could best determine the infrastructure layout.

The company has not said anything in the form of media releases or announcements since the purchase. It did have LinkedIn postings at one point looking for what is called a “Head of Scientific and Regulatory Affairs – U.S. Branch” and a “Head of Marketing, US Market.”

NF North America purchased the 337,391-square-foot single story building on 23 acres at 80 Northwest Blvd. in January for $67 million, four times more than its assessed value. (Courtesy)

NF North America purchased the 337,391-square-foot single story building on 23 acres at 80 Northwest Blvd. in January for $67 million, four times more than its assessed value. (Courtesy)

“With a strong presence in the domestic market, we are now expanding aggressively into the United States,” the post said. “We are committed to bringing our unique and high-quality beverages to American consumers while adapting to local tastes and preferences,” it said in those postings.

Because the site is located in an area zoned for manufacturing, the city has had little public oversight of the project.

The one opportunity for a public look at the plans was early in 2025 when representatives submitted to the Planning Board a proposal to widen the entrance, a submission that would have necessitated planner review and a public hearing. But that application was withdrawn.

Early on, company representatives had expressed to Pennichuck the need for up to 2 million gallons of water per day for its bottling processes, well within the water system’s capacity to provide it, according to Boisvert.

He has said that the potential use “falls within our existing withdrawal permits.” According to Boisvert, Pennichuck is currently permitted by the state for more than 30 million gallons of extraction per day. On average, the daily demand is 11 or 12 million gallons, up to 20 million gallons during the summer.

Concerns have been expressed about Chinese-ownership of property here by a variety of elected officials.

The state Legislature in 2025 passed and Gov. Kelly Ayotte signed into law a prohibition of such ownership by certain foreign nationals, including anyone or any entity from China, as well as Iran, Syria, Russia, or North Korea. That legislation does not affect the already sold Nashua property.

U.S. Reps. Christopher Pappas, D-1st CD, and Maggie Goodlander, D-2nd CD, with others, introduced legislation to strengthen existing federal authority to review, investigate, and block foreign real estate transactions that they say could jeopardize America’s national security.

The legislation requires the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to annually review, update, and report on facilities and property of the United States government deemed sensitive and subject to CFIUS’s authority to review and investigate certain real estate transactions.

Goodlander and Republican Executive Councilor Janet Stevens have also asked for federal review of the purchase by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

In addition to water sources, officials have cited security concerns for the New Hampshire National Guard in Concord, New Hampshire Army Aviation Support Facility in Concord, Readiness Center of the 197th Artillery Brigade in Manchester,  Pease Air National Guard Base in Portsmouth, Space Force Station in New Boston, and the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine.

At the encouragement of other members of the Executive Council and at the governor’s behest, the attorney general’s office did a review of actions leading up to the purchase of the property.

No violation of law was found, but the report did fault the state economic affairs personnel for not communicating up the chain about the efforts to recruit Nongfu Spring into establishing a business presence in the Granite State. Read that NHBR story here:

Per NHBR’s original reporting on the transaction, Nongfu Spring’s American investors include Vanguard and BlackRock. See that story here:

In his ongoing feud with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, President Donald Trump has touted Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s senior managing director, as a possible replacement when Powell’s term expires in May.

There is a second Chinese-owned property in Nashua, the former Daniel Webster College campus.

State Sen. Rosemarie Rung, D-Nashua, filed legislation to provide $20 million so that the city of Nashua could buy the property. Mayor Donchess told a Senate Finance Committee hearing that the city would partner with a developer to create housing. Republicans criticized the appropriation as a “bailout” for Nashua.

Xinhua Education Consulting Services, a Chinese-controlled company, purchased the 53-acre campus in 2017. There’s been little to no activity there since.