Financial Times

Beverage firms move swiftly to provide bottled water
By Iromi Perera
A day after the devastating tidal wave disaster, Sri Lankan beverage companies stopped production of their beverages and switched to filling bottles with water to meet an urgent request for clean drinking water.

Lion Brewery Ceylon Ltd stopped producing beer for around three days and bottled water from Monday evening with the help of all employees. It took a day to completely flush the line and clean the bottles and they bottled water and packed it - losing beer production for nearly three days. The company usually produces 225,000 bottles a day.

Company officials said 120,000 bottles were ordered from the Glass Company for this purpose. The treated water used for beer making was used in this instance. Clear glass bottles were used, as the company did not want to send water in beer bottles.

They were bottled mechanically with a crown cork and was pasteurised but the bottles were loaded into cardboard boxes and not crates. All of which had to be done manually taking a long time. All the bottles had a label saying 'Drinking water - Not for sale'.

All the water bottles were filled and sent to affected areas with trucks from the company distributors in Tangalle, Galle and Beruwala delivering it to camps in those areas. A truckload consisting of around 30,000 bottles were sent to the East but was brought back as the load was too much. As a result, the bottles were sent in smaller amounts to the East.

Nausha Raheem, Manager, Corporate Affairs of Lion Brewery said that the company is trying to get the bottles back from the camps so that they can be refilled again. The bottles were sent through OXFAM, Sri Lanka Muslim Congress (SLMC), Islamic Centre and the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization (TRO).

Coca Cola Beverages Sri Lanka said they stopped their normal production and started bottling water to send to the affected areas. All employees had contributed five days salary for this cause and the company itself had donated money in order to produce 90,000 litres of bottled water last week.

The water was bottled in normal plastic one and a half litre Coca Cola bottles but none of the bottles had any labels on them to indicate where the water had come from. The water was sent to Jaffna, Trincomalee, Ampara, Galle and Hambantota. The water to Trincomalee had been sent through the Red Cross, while the water to the south was dispatched through the area sales agents.

Some 25,000 litres had been given to the Prime Minister's Secretariat and more bottles were given to media institutions and also the National Disaster Management authority.

The company bottled another 90,000 litres on Thursday for UNICEF, Red Cross and Sarvodaya and they intend to continue this effort. "We felt that there was a dire need," said Asanka De Silva, Brand Manager of Coca Cola International. He also mentioned that staff members would be going to Trincomalee and the south to help in any way possible.

The company does not produce bottled water usually but when the need arose, they stopped all other production and bottled water for one entire day.

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