PARIS (AP) — The government of French President Emmanuel Macron covered up decisions over the illegal treatment of mineral water by food industry giant Nestle, including the world-famous Perrier brand, a Senate inquiry commission said Monday.
Its report focused on Nestle's years of use of treatments to avoid bacterial or chemical contamination of water labeled as “natural mineral water” or “spring water” for brands also including Contrex, Vittel and Hépar. Such treatments are prohibited under French and European regulations.
The report concluded that France's government had concealed “illegal practices."
“In addition to Nestle Waters’ lack of transparency, the French government’s lack of transparency must also be highlighted,” it said.
French media reported the banned treatments last year.
The report noted a "deliberate strategy" of concealment since the first government meeting on the issue in October 2021. Months later, authorities agreed to a Nestle plan to replace the banned treatments with microfiltering.
Nestle did not immediately respond to a request for comment. France’s government did not immediately comment.
Last year, the Swiss company publicly acknowledged having used treatments on mineral waters and agreed to pay a 2 million euro fine ($2.2 million) to avoid legal action.
The inquiry commission interviewed more than 120 people including Nestle’s CEO and top managers. One refused to speak to it: Alexis Kohler, then-secretary general of the Elysee presidential palace, who the report said has spoken several times with Nestle executives by phone or in person.
The commission concluded “that the presidency of the republic had known, at least since 2022, that Nestle had been cheating for years.”
Asked about scandal in February, Macron said he was “not aware of these things ... There is no collusion with anyone.”
Alexandre Ouizille, the commission's rapporteur, said the total amount of the fraud has been estimated at over 3 billion euros ($3.38 billion) by France's agency in charge of fraud control.
Natural mineral water is sold about 100 to 400 times the price of tap water, he said, denouncing "misleading of consumers."
Ouizille described a Nestle plant in southern France the commission visited where there were “sliding cabinets behind which illegal treatments were carried out.”
The report said Nestle argued there was a risk of job losses if the government did not authorize some kind of treatment or microfiltration, because its plants would have to close due to spring water being contaminated by bacteria like E. coli that can cause serious illness and death.
Laurent Burgoa, the president of the commission, said there has been no proven harm to the health of people who drank water sold by Nestle.
“Personally, I drank some Perrier ... But I didn’t know what I was drinking, that’s the problem," Burgoa said.
Bottles of Perrier are pictured in a supermarket, as a French Senate inquiry commission said the government of President Emmanuel Macron covered up decisions over the illegal treatment of mineral water by food industry giant Nestle, Monday, May 19, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
A bottle of Perrier stands on a cafe table as a French Senate inquiry commission said the government of President Emmanuel Macron covered up decisions over the illegal treatment of mineral water by food industry giant Nestle, Monday, May 19, 2025 in Paris. (AP Photo/Thomas Padilla)
MIAMI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 13, 2026--
For decades, battery manufacturing has stood still despite advances in battery chemistry. Today, Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc. (MATERIAL) announces it has raised $7.1 million in Seed funding, co-led by Outlander VC and Harpoon Ventures, with participation from GoAhead Ventures, Myelin VC, Demos Capital and Giant Step Capital, to break this stagnation and usher in a new era of energy design.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112647458/en/
Dead space is dead
MATERIAL’s proprietary HYBRID3D™ technology prints energy directly into a component of any shape and size, removing the barriers between design intent and manufacturing reality. This category-defining method produces batteries which adopt the shape of the object rather than forcing the object to accommodate a rigid, cylindrical or pouch cell. The platform unites multiple advanced additive and semiconductor manufacturing techniques to print energy into the very structure of a device.
“The world doesn't need another breakthrough in battery chemistry; it needs a breakthrough in how we make energy storage,” said Gabe Elias, CEO of MATERIAL and 7-time Formula One World Champion design engineer. “We are building the tools to make electrical energy formless. Whether it’s filling the hollow profile of a fixed-wing drone or conforming to the body of a wearable device user, our platform allows electrical power to behave like a fuel design element. Our technology allows us to deploy anywhere and print exactly what the application demands.”
Validating the Mission: $1.25M Air Force Contract
Already demonstrating its value proposition, MATERIAL is currently partnering with the United States Air Force to execute a Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) award for a $1.25 million project.
As part of this project, MATERIAL is collaborating with PDW and other leading U.S. defense developers to integrate conformal batteries directly into Class I unmanned aerial systems (UAS). By eliminating the "dead space" inherent in standard cylindrical cell arrays, MATERIAL’s technology is projected to dramatically increase pack-level energy densities by over 50% and reduce module weight by more than 22 percent for this study.
“MATERIAL’s ability to tailor battery geometry to our airframe would allow us to push endurance and payload limits further,” said Darsan Patel, Director of Product Design at PDW. “Conformal energy technology bridges the gap between rapid prototyping and field-ready performance.”
This partnership is an initial step towards edge manufacturing and domestic supply chain stability, in which MATERIAL would be able to deploy containerized units to produce mission-critical power supplies on demand, breaking reliance on fragile global supply chains.
Giving investors a reason to believe
“MATERIAL is creating an entirely new paradigm for the battery industry,” said Jordan Kretchmer, Senior Partner at Outlander VC. “Gabe and his team aren’t competing with gigafactories; they are rendering them obsolete for high-performance applications by enabling batteries to be designed around any product structure, instead of the structure having to be designed around the battery. This is the category-defining shift Outlander lives to back.”
Harpoon Ventures, utilizing its "Freedom Stack" thesis, identifies MATERIAL as a critical node for national resilience. “We invest in companies that give the U.S. and its allies an unfair technological advantage,” said Larsen Jensen, Founder and General Partner at Harpoon Ventures. “Current defense platforms are strangled by the geometry of commercial batteries. MATERIAL eliminates that constraint. Their ability to decouple energy storage from rigid form factors is a game-changer for our national industrial base. This is what manufacturing sovereignty looks like.”
Unlimited power, unlimited commercial possibility
On the commercial side, MATERIAL is working with consumer electronics partners on next-generation products. Additional pilots are underway across mobility, robotics, and wearables.
About Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc.
Material Hybrid Manufacturing Inc. is rewriting the rules of energy storage. Its core technology, HYBRID3D™, is a chemistry-agnostic platform that 3D prints full-stack batteries in custom geometries. By merging the precision of semiconductor manufacturing with the flexibility of additive techniques, MATERIAL enables the creation of conformal batteries that fit seamlessly into the structure of any device. Headquartered in Miami, FL, MATERIAL is teaching the world how to manufacture autonomy.
For more information, visit www.material.inc.
From left: Founders Miles Dotson, Gabe Elias and Christopher Reyes, PhD
