International Bottled Water Association | NEWS RELEASE |November 10, 2020
Primo Water Leader Earns Prestigious Industry Award
Alexandria, VA – The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) announced this week that Tom Condon, director of technical services at Primo Water North America, was honored as a recipient of the prestigious Kristin Safran/IBWA Board of Directors’ Award for 2020.
The announcement was made during IBWA’s Annual Business Meeting, which is being held virtually this week (November 9-12) as part of the 2020 IBWA Annual Business Conference.
Mr. Condon, who has worked in the bottled water industry since 1977, is responsible for the design and troubleshooting of water processing equipment, spring water source evaluations, and technical improvement of processes and controls at Primo Water. IBWA has benefited from Mr. Condon sharing his bottled water industry experiences and insights with association staff.
“As a member of IBWA, Tom has been active since the late 1980s,” says IBWA Convention Committee Co-Chair Dan Kelly. “Over those years, there have been many technical issues during Tom’s tenure as Technical Committee chair and committee member. He was instrumental in connecting IBWA with experts like Dr. Andy Eaton and the late Dr. Stephen Edberg to advise and assist the association in addressing complex technical or regulatory issues.”
Mr. Condon has also served on and contributed to several other IBWA committees and sub-committees, including the Virus/Microbial Subcommittee, Packaging Subcommittee, Audit Program Evaluation Team, Gray Areas Task Force, and Pilot Plant Task Force, among many others.
His career began at the Illinois Department of Public Health in June 1977, where he worked in the Food, Dairy, and Water Microbiology laboratory. He also worked at Hinckley and Schmitt, Inc. as the company’s corporate quality control manager, where he set up a new water microbiology laboratory and the standardization of water testing and treatment methods.
Created in 2006, the IBWA Directors’ Award recognizes members whose advocacy, commitment, and actions on behalf of IBWA—and the bottled water industry—have achieved clear and measurable results for both IBWA and the bottled water industry as a whole. In 2009, the award was renamed the Kristin Safran/IBWA Directors’ Award in honor of former IBWA Board of Directors member Kristin Safran.
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Media Contact:
Jill Culora
703-647-4609
jculora@bottledwater.org
The International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) is the authoritative source of information about all types of bottled waters, including spring, mineral, purified, artesian, and sparkling. Founded in 1958, IBWA’s membership includes U.S. and international bottlers, distributors and suppliers. IBWA is committed to working with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which regulates bottled water as a packaged food product, to set comprehensive and stringent standards for safe, high-quality bottled water products.
In addition to FDA regulations, IBWA member bottlers must adhere to the IBWA Bottled Water Code of Practice, which mandates additional standards and practices that in some cases are more stringent than federal and state regulations. A key feature of the IBWA Bottled Water Code of Practice is a mandatory annual plant inspection by an independent, third-party organization.
