More than half of the water bottling firms in Kenya will be out of business after the Kenya Bureau of Standards (Kebs) cracked the whip on rogue manufacturers.
The announcement from the standards body came on Wednesday saying that it had suspended permits for 368 water bottling companies for what it termed as their failure to comply with quality standards.
There are currently over 600 water bottling companies licenced by Kebs to manufacture the precious commodity.
Kebs Managing Director Charles Ongwae said that they were forced to read the riot act after they noticed that some firms had re-located from their premises without notifying them and had also not renewed their licences for over a year, and were yet to pay for their licences.
And because they had secretly re-located from their premises their source of water was also not known and as such the water they were selling could not be trusted, said Ongwae adding the move was taken so as to protect consumers.
“They are supposed to stop selling water until they come for certification,” said Ongwae.
“There are a lot of companies which claim to be selling mineral water in the market which do not meet the requirements of mineral water,” he added.
Bottled water has been classified by Kebs as one of the high-risk products and the lucrativeness of this business has attracted a lot of players some of them unscrupulous traders who refill tap water into used bottles.
A recent World Bank/IFC study detailing the bottled-water market in Kenya estimated sales at Sh12 billion per year.
Some manufacturers have cried foul describing the action taken by Kebs as ‘too drastic’ and have asked Kebs to give more time, possibly another six months, to comply with the requirements including paying the requisite fees and getting samples of their water tested.
The Kenya Revenue Authority also keeps a list of water bottling companies licenced for excise duty tax. However, its list of licenced excise manufacturers has only 45 companies compared to Kebs’ 600 pointing to the existence of so many water bottling firms that are not paying excise duty tax.
Bottled water would also soon be required to have a local version of the secure import standardization mark which would weed out all unscrupulous water manufacturers.
