Poor products dominate bottled water business

Bottled water supply has become a fast growing business as a growing number of people over the years have turned to the bottled drinking water against the backdrop of diminishing confidence on water supplied by the authorities.
But substandard suppliers are dominating the market in absence of proper monitoring and legal action by the authorities against the unscrupulous manufacturers, suppliers and traders.
According to the industry people, filtered water in bulk containers is at least a Tk-300 crore industry now, which is growing more then 30 per cent each year over the past few years.
‘Demand for filtered water is growing more than 30 per cent (each year) and off course, it is due to consumers rush for safe water,’ said Mohammed Anisuzzaman, managing director of Alpine Fresh Water System Limited.
Industry sources said around 10 brands including Alpine, Everest, Duncan and Fresh are the organised large-scale suppliers, each having delivery orders of between 2,000 and 4,000 jars of 19 litres every day.
A Matin Chowdhury, president of the Association of Bangladesh Mineral and Purified Drinking Water Manufacturers, said at best 50 manufacturers, including 21 members of his organisation, might have standard filtering facilities.
But more than 3,000 filtered water suppliers, mushroomed in the market, just somehow pack WASA water to containers or cans and supply to the market in the area where people are less aware about the quality, Matin added.
Substandard suppliers get very good market in street food shops or tea stalls as their owners prefer buying canned water at the lowest prices caring little about the health aspects, said a senior marketing executive of a leading brand.
Unorganised brands or the suppliers are believed to grab three-fourth of the market now, according to the industry people.
Authorised brands sell each 19-litre container at between Tk 50 and Tk 57 while unregistered and substandard ones sell that at between Tk 25 and Tk 45, according to a random survey of the firm.
Emdad Hossain Malek, chief of the market monitoring cell at the Consumer Association of Bangladesh, blamed the law enforcing agencies for the mushrooming unauthorised canned water supply firms.
‘Operations of hundreds of unregistered canned water supply firms indicate how serious the standardisation authorities or the law enforcers are,’ said Emdad.
Lutfor Rahman, director of the Bangladesh Standard and Testing Institute, said some 300 ordinarily purified and mineral water brands had been registered with the national standardisation organisation.
The BSTI makes it mandatory that every canned water supplier has its own deep tube-well and micro-biological laboratory to ensure hygiene water purification and bottling system at the plant.
He also said they regularly conducted drive against the unauthorised brands and denied the charge that they were not serious.
Matin of the purified drinking water manufacturers association said a section of unauthorised suppliers in recent times prevented authorised brands entering markets in different areas.
Different authorised traders recently complained to the association that in many areas unauthorised suppliers were making money preventing the authorised brands in reaching the market.
Matin told New Age that they would meet the BSTI officials shortly to address the existing problems.

Courtesy of NewAgebd