Coast Development Authority (CDA) has unveiled the first bottled water plant in the arid Tana River County. CDA Managing Director Dr. Mohamed Keinan made the announcement and said that revamping the plant is not only for the production capacity but also the speed to achieve both quality and quantity for better revenues.
The automatic water bottling plant has a packaging capacity of up to 4,000 bottles of purified water an hour for sustainability. The plastic water bottles are currently produced and supplied in 500 ml and 1-litre bottles and will be up scaled as per market needs. The new product also known as the ‘Tana Best’ is being rolled out at the Integrated Fruit Processing Plant (IFPP) factory located in Boji Tana River County.
“We have injected Sh.7.5m to install a state-of-the-art water treatment and packaging equipment. Appropriate planning and research was done to ensure the new product was successful. The new venture into the water bottling business was to complement the mango processing plant during offseason,” said Dr. Keinan.
The downfall of Galole Integrated Fruit Processing plant
Galole Integrated Fruit Processing plant was built in 2012 and launched in April 2014. The project is located in Tana River County, within the Coastal region of Kenya. It was established to produce mango pulp, for juice production, and process other fruits and honey.
The plant stands on a 200-acre piece of land allocated to it by the County Council of Tana River. It became a white elephant in 2015, just after one year of operation. In 2018, the state used a total of Sh 145m to revive the processing plant and expand its production capacity.
According to Dr. Mohamed Keinan, project failed due to the manual nature of machines, which affected the quality and quantity of the products, consequently affecting revenue. Moreover, the area where the plant is located was too remote with no water and electricity supplies, services that are essential for production.
Initially, the plant was manually operated, but after its revival, it became fully automated, with plans to install bigger machines compared to the previous one. Dr. Mohamed Keinan said that the Authority has upgraded the fruit juice manufacturing equipment to include the water production line.
