Greenland ice exported to make cocktails, Dubai's new madness

Refresh your cocktail in the middle of the desert with pure ice from the glaciers of the Far North. This is the business launched by Malik V. Rasmussen, an entrepreneur from Greenland who sells blocks fished in his country's waters to luxury bars and restaurants in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His start-up Arctic Ice, founded in 2022, has just exported its first ice cubes, reports The Guardian on January 9.

On its website, Arctic Ice promises to offer ice made from “the cleanest water on Earth.” And to praise these ice cubes which, frozen for tens of thousands of years, “have not been contaminated by pollutants produced by human activities”.

The ice blocks are fished from the Nuup Kangerlua fjord, near Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, using a boat equipped with a crane. Only the purest, transparent ones are sought after. Once brought back on board, they are cut with a chainsaw and loaded into plastic crates. The ice cream is then packaged, loaded into a refrigerated container, and shipped to Denmark, before boarding a second cargo ship to the United Arab Emirates.

The start-up's slick communication on social networks has earned it outraged comments from Internet users pointing out the cynicism of such a business, transporting by cargo ship to the other side of the world a mineral from glaciers which have already lost 4,700 billion tons of water in 20 years due to global warming.

At the Guardian, Malik V. Rasmussen even says he has received death threats but defends the carbon footprint of his business: the refrigerated containers would in any case have left empty from Greenland, which imports far more frozen products than it produces. exports. The most important stage remains, from Denmark to the Emirates. For this, he promises to offset his emissions.