A local water bottler has unveiled a new water company which aims to be fully operational within the next six months, following the merger of the Echo and Nautilus bottled water brands.
Former Cabinet Minister and Head of The Source River Limited (TSRL) Tennyson Wells announced that Ni Limited, named after an Arawak word for water, began its operations on June 1 and is currently handling both brands. The company has "doubled" its staff in the past month.
"We are still in the development stages. Even though we are producing some water now, it will probably take us three to six months before we bring everything online. Right now...we're still doing the five-gallon Echo and some five-gallon Nautilus," said Wells.
Ni Limited Managing Director Dwight Sawyer confirmed that the company has conducted tests and extensive maintenance to its facilities during the past two months after assuming control of the Echo and Nautilus brands from TSRL in April.
Wells confirmed earlier reports that the two brands would be marketed separately, with Echo branded as Ni's premium water product, while Nautilus would be targeted to compete with Chelsea's Choice and Aquapure.
"Echo will be marketed as a premium water brand. In order to do that properly, we have to redevelop the distiller. We will bring on a new distiller...[which] costs several hundred thousand dollars.
"We believe there is a market here for that. The problem is that when we were producing it with the old distiller that we had, it was too expensive. It costs 40-45 cents a gallon to produce, and we now need to be able to produce it for less than 10 cents per gallon," stated Wells.
Despite the overhaul in operations, both Wells and Sawyer are confident that renovations will only take a few months, given the pre-existing infrastructure for both brands. Ni Limited aims to produce roughly 70,000 gallons of water per day once the revamped plant is fully operational.
Nautilus confirmed that it had shut down in April of this year after depleting its supplies in January. However, Wells and Sawyer confirmed that Ni Limited had rehired a substantial number of employees from Nautilus.
"We have doubled the size of our staff in the past month. We brought on quite a number of former Nautilus employees who operated the machinery we got from them. So we've probably got about 50 people right now.
Former Nautilus President Jason Evans has also joined Ni Limited as its operations manager.

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