History

Knett's intervention in 1907 was a consequence of a many years of comprehensive study and of the new momentum at Rogaška Slatina just before the First World War. Already, from its initial start in the 17^th century, the bottling of Rogaška water was not keeping up with the needs of its suppliers, and this situation was also the case at the beginning of the 20^th century. Steep growth in its sales prompted the decision for the industrial construction of a devised bottling complex at Rogaška Slatina, of huge water accumulating areas as designed by the Viennese architect Karl Haybäck. This Viennese architect, who similarly to Knett, had worked in Czech health spa resorts and was specialised in industrial, balneological and the building of large Hapsburg health resort spas. In 1904 a large complex for bottling of the mineral rich water was constucted and (the same as his other building spa works) it had very clearly defined secessional similarity. During the period before the First World War over 3,000,000 bottles of Rogaška water were despatched from here on a yearly basis. They equipped Donat with a yellow-coloured stopper, Styria with a green coloured-stopper and, the oldest amongst them all, Tempel, with a blue-coloured stopper.

After 1952, with the discovery of the highly mineralised Rogaška water, the extraction was ten times more than it had been previously therefore the capacity of Haybäck's bottling complex became inadequate. In 1969 they successfully filled up over 20,000,000 bottles, but this was the maximum capability of the old complex. In 1972 they opened a new bottling complex at Rogaška Slatina in which it possible to bottle more than twice as much Rogaška. This bottling complex is still in operation today.

Before the construction of Haybäck's bottling complex, the technique for bottling Rogaška water (and prior to the discovery of Donat) scarcely differed in any way from the technique depicted in Karl Russ's 1811 painting; the water was poured directly into the bottles with ladels from a walled-in and securely covered spring. The bottles were then carried to a wooden trough in the central warehouse where they were checked, stopped up with cork, appropriately labelled, put together in a crate and finally loaded onto carts.

In 1852 this technique of bottling was improved upon when they arranged for a new large warehouse (under one of today's hotels) and when the Tempel well became equipped with the Tober pump which transferred across the glazed pipes into large sumps, where they filled up the bottles and put them into cases. This was then carried along along a track to a ramp. From that point it went according to the old way, ie with a team of horses.

Only the new bottling complex had a special industrial track leading into the warehouse. This was connected to the newly constructed local railway route Grobelno-provincial border (Rogatec), purely because of Rogaška.

As the third best sold mineral water in the world the packaging was appropriate to that fact. Because of its success it was counterfeited from the 17^th century onwards and the protection on the packaging was the only trademark by which Rogaška ensured it was genuine.

The bottles of Rogaška were fitted out with distinctive labels and with special seals on the stopper which was visible only through the bottom of the bottle and with a special metal layer around the stopper.

In 1877 its distributors, in the official brochure, warned:

"We would like to draw your attention to the bottles with stoppers, on which there is a rough imitation of a Styrian panther without the ducal crown and without the encircling inscription 'St.Land.Rohitscher Saurebrunn'. Bottles with such stoppers do not contain Rogaška sour mineral water. The best thing to do is if you turn in the direction of the Health Spa Resort with your orders or indicate your need to the main subsidiaries, which have been set up precisely because of increasing misuse with pseudo- Rogaška waters and because of ways that counterfeit products find to Vienna, Budapest and other large cities"

The images are held in the Historical archives at Celje