100,000-year-old glacial ice is being shipped to glitzy bars in Dubai to be served in drinks.
The ice is being harvested by a start up company in Greenland called Arctic Ice and sent 4,750 miles to be consumed by Dubai’s elite residents.
Arctic Ice use a special boat and crane to extract and move the ice, which has been detached from glaciers in the local ice sheet. They search the waters around Greenland’s capital Nuuk for suitable specimens. The ice is the cleanest and purest you will find as it is from the centre of the glacier and has never been exposed to soils or human contaminants.
Malik V Rasmussen, a co-founder of the company, said the ice was the cleanest in the world. Mr Rasmussen, who has recently shipped his first 20,000 tonnes to Dubai, said that the glacial ice was different to frozen mineral water that is currently used in Dubai’s elite drinking estblishments. He said the ice had been so heavily compressed over thousands of years, there were no air bubbles inside, so it took longer to melt.
The ice, which is commonly used in drinks in Greenland bars, is transported to a refrigerated shipping unit where it is stored until it is sent to Denmark. From Denmark it is transferred to another specialist vessel and transported to its Dubai distributors Natural Ice.
Mr Rasmussen added: “In Greenland, we make all our money from fish and from tourism. For a long time, I have wanted to find something else that we can profit from.”
