IDS Borjomi International senior executive met on September 6 with officials from Russia's consumer protection agency, RosPotrebNadzor, to discuss possibility of resumption of import of Georgian mineral water, Borjomi, to Russia, the agency said.

RosPotrebNadzor said in a press release, that the company should provide “technical documentation on production and safety” after which the agency would “inspect” samples of produced Borjomi mineral water and then consider “possible access of the production to the Russian market.”

IDS Borjomi International, owned by a private equity and investment management firm Salford Capital Partners Inc., unites enterprises producing bottled mineral waters in Russia, Ukraine and Georgia.

IDS Borjomi Georgia, formerly Georgian Glass & Mineral Waters Company, is the group’s Georgian subsidiary, which owns ‘Borjomi’ trademark and which holds an exclusive right for extraction and production of Borjomi mineral waters; the Georgian government prolonged the license for 25 years in 2009.

According to the company currently it exports “Borjomi” mineral water to over thirty countries.

Russia banned import of Georgian mineral waters, as well as of wines, citing consumer safety reasons in 2006.

Late last head of RosPotrebNadzor, Gennady Onishchenko, said that Russian experts were ready to inspect quality of the Georgian products to consider possibility of resumption of imports.

Officials in Tbilisi say that such statements are made in Moscow recently because of ongoing Swiss-mediated talks with Georgia on Russia’s WTO entry terms. The issue of embargo, according to the Georgian negotiators, is not part of those negotiations because Russia will anyway have to lift that politically-motivated embargo when and if Russia joins WTO.