International
Canadian bottled air sales booms in China
China may have found a temporary solution to the hazardous pollution levels which has seen smog in Chinese metropolis Shanghai hit its highest level since January on Tuesday, prompting schools to ban outdoor activities and authorities to limit work at construction sites and factories as polluted air spreads around the country.
Reports say a Canadian company selling air bottled in a ski resort is now seeing huge demand from Chinese customers. The air sells for $14 to $20, depending on the size of the canister.
Vitality Air said that the first batch of 500 canisters filled with fresh air from the Rocky Mountain town of Banff went on sale in China last month and sold out within two weeks.
“Now we’re taking lots of pre orders for our upcoming shipment. We’re getting close to the 1,000 mark,” said Harrison Wang, director of China operations.
Read also: Trudeau’s victory in Canada as challenge to Nigerian youths
Vitality Air co-founder Moses Lam says he came up with the business idea last year after listing a bag of zip locked air on eBay, which sold for 99 cents. Lam, who is based in the city of Edmonton, says he makes the four-hour journey to Banff once every couple of weeks and spends 10 hours bottling the air.
“We wanted to do something fun and disruptive so we decided to see if we could sell air. It’s time consuming because every one of these bottles is hand bottled. We’re dealing with fresh air, we want it to be fresh and we don’t want to run it through machines which are oiled and greased,” said Lam.
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