ROARING SPRING — Roaring Spring Water has sold its Gettysburg location and water store to Nestle Waters North America.

The transaction includes deliveries and services operated through the Gettysburg location, which includes eastern Pennsylvania, eastern Maryland and Loudoun County, Va.

This deal will allow Nestle to expand its ReadyRefresh by Nestle operations beverage delivery service.

Roaring Spring Water officials said it was not easy to let go of the Gettysburg facility, which opened in 1989.

“This difficult decision was made in order to consolidate our resources into our other two delivery markets where we have a larger market share,” Roaring Spring Water CEO Dan Hoover said in a statement.

“We are going to concentrate our resources in the markets where we have a more dominant position. With our facility at Gettysburg, we went in all directions and got out pretty far. We had a nice customer base but were not in a dominant position in any of those markets. We were always No. 3 in those markets; there is more competition every day,” Roaring Spring Water General Manager Scott Hoover said.

Roaring Spring Water will continue to provide sales, delivery and services of its water and coffee products in central Pennsylvania and will operate its water stores in Roaring Spring and Ridgeley, W.Va.

Nestle officials ere excited about the transaction.

“We are thrilled to open our first ReadyRefresh branch in Gettysburg,” Henrik Jelert, executive vice president, Ready­Refresh by Nestle, said in a statement.

The water industry has changed.

“The industry has evolved into extremely large and extremely small companies; we are in the mid-range. In Gettysburg, Nestle was going to come into the market,” Scott Hoover said.

The Gettysburg facility employed about 20 people.

“We had an excellent group of employees there. Many were offered jobs by Nestle and chose to stay on,” Scott Hoover said.

The sale price was not disclosed.

Mirror Staff Writer Walt Frank is at 946-7467.