A NEWLY-ELECTED councillor from Weymouth has a spring in his step after launching a new business capitalising on one of the area’s greatest natural resources.

James Farquharson, 43, from Preston, has launched a bottled water company called Jurassic Spring which bottles and sells water from a natural source point along the Jurassic Coast.

The company is based at Mr Farquharson’s home in Preston and he said he decided to launch the company after growing up near the River Wey and drinking the water as a child.

Mr Farquharson was born and bred in Weymouth but moved out of the area to attend university, before working in the marketing departments of international brands such as Yahoo and Dell.

After becoming disillusioned with his job and growing increasingly frustrated at not seeing his wife or two children enough, they decided to move back to Weymouth and start the company.

He said: “When we were thinking of moving back, we drove past the River Wey and I said to my wife I didn’t know what I was going to do for work, and maybe I could just bottle the water from the River Wey and sell it, because I remember drinking it as a child.

“After that we started to think about it more seriously and from that point, it’s taken us two years to get the product ready. The water is of great quality and it tastes really pure.

“The water is sourced further west down the coast, in Honiton, but the water is bottled, and the company is based, in Weymouth.

The company was officially launched at the Fish and Ships festival on Portland last month, and it is the first water company to be based in Weymouth since the 1930s, when the Weymouth Soda Water Company closed.

Mr Farquharson said his product, which was just still and sparkling water at the moment, had been received well by local people.

He said: “At the Fish and Ships festival, I spoke to a lot of local people and restaurateurs and others in the tourist industry, and they seemed really intrigued by the product.

“It is very early doors for us, but I’m hoping it will be a success. We are going out on a bit of a limb really, it’s quite daunting but quite exciting as well.

"I’ve got confidence because Dorset has got a great food and drink community and hopefully they will like us too.”

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