HYDERABAD: The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) will, through a private agency, foray into commercial market by setting up a water bottling plant on ‘Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT)’ model as per BIS norms to process and filter the water supplied by HMWS&SB and to pack in 20 litres bubbles, 250 ml PET bottles and 200 ml sachets and sell them in the market. There is a huge demand for packaged drinking water, especially in government and private offices, hotels, restaurants, shopping malls and commercial establishments.
The surface water will be supplied by the water board to the bottling plant and the private agency will sell the treated water in the commercial market at prices fixed by the board but which will be lower than price of water sold by private companies in the market. The agency has to supply water free of cost to HMWS&Sb as per the latter’s requirement and at subsidised rates to government departments, Secretariat, GHMC which require packaged water on daily basis.
The subsidised rates will be lesser by `5 for a 20-litre bubble, `1 for a 250 ml bottle and 10 paise for a 200 ml sachet than the market rates. HMWS&SB officials told Express that the selected vendor would be required to treat and process water as per BIS norms and package a minimum number of 20-litre cans, 250 ml bottles and 200 ml sachets as per the requirement. In a single-shift operation the plant can process 33,000 litres and there can be three shifts if production is to be scaled up if the demand goes up.
Currently, the board buys water bottles and sachets to cater to citizens at events organised or monitored by the government such as Ganesh immersion, Bonalu, Bathukamma and Ramzan festivals, Independence Day and Republic Day celebrations. Once the plant is set up, purchase of water from outside will be stopped. The private firm will maintain water quality as per BIS norms under the supervision of board’s quality control staff and will be responsible for maintenance of quality from the point of processing to the point of delivery.It will be free to open distribution centres at its cost with board’s pre-approval and sell the packaged drinking water from those centres in the brand name and under the logo which are to be approved by the water board.