Manila Water expands bottled water business

Manila Water Total Solutions Corp., a unit of Manila Water Co. Inc., is set to expand its new bottled water business with greater market coverage and establishment of five more bottling plants.

Ferdinand de la Cruz, Total Solutions president, said five new bottling plants for its Healthy Family purified water brand are pipelined for establishment this year in addition to the existing plant in Taguig that purifies 5,000 five-gallon of water daily.

Lined up for establishment are plants in Taytay, Pasig, and Quezon City. The company is also scouting for locations in the middle of Metro Manila and south of Metro Manila for the two other plants.

This is meant to support the expansion of the distribution network of the product in Metro Manila East Zone as well as in selected areas of Quezon City and Metro Manila outside of the East Zone.

“We invested for Total Solutions, P500 million in terms of capital expenditure as approved by the board early this year for the expansion of Healthy Family water. Same covers the plan expansion, all the development expenses and setting up of the organization,” said De la Cruz in a briefing yesterday.

For the Taguig plant alone, the company invested P25 million for the pilot plant.

With the establishment of the five new plants this year, Total Solutions would be able to produce 70,000 five-gallon bottles of Healthy Family water daily.

Healthy Family water is a five-gallon purified bottled water with a shelf life of six months. It is delivered directly to the homes of consumers for P40.

The product is produced through a closed-loop and fully-automated system that guarantees no human contact.

For this month alone, Total Solutions aims to cover most of the East Zone in its distribution network.

The product is currently available for distribution in Taguig, Pateros and select areas of Makati, Manila and Mandaluyong.

Total Solutions currently has around 300 distribution partners in Metro Manila and would further be widening the network this year.

De la Cruz said the bottled water business is seen to become a significant contribution to Manila Water’s bottomline in three to five years.

“We see this business becoming a third leg of Manila Water’s businesses. The first being the core East Zone concession area and the geographical expansion areas. Hopefully, this would become a significant contributor to the bottomline in three to five years. So we are developing it now,” he said.

Robert Baffrey, product innovation and development head of Total Solutions, said the Healthy Family water product has significant advantage over common purified water because of its longer shelf life as ordinary bottled water, he said, deteriorates in three to seven days.

“The quality is also guaranteed in the handling of the bottle as it has no human contact and is therefore more hygienic,” he said.