Nkasiobi Oluikpe
As the world celebrated the World Water Day (WWD) yesterday, CWAY Group, a food and beverages company in Nigeria, has made known their contributions and compliance to the attainment of the SDG 6, which is the availability and sustainability of safe water and sanitation for all.
Present at the event were officials from the Lagos State Water Corporation and Dr. Roland Uwadae, an environmentalist from the University of Lagos, who gave a keynote address titled: Celebrating the Earth’s Most Important Treasure of Inestimable Value: Accelerating Change Through Awareness and Action.
While fielding questions from journalists, Abiodun Suleiman, Sales Director, CWAY, disclosed that as part of innovative efforts at preventing damages to our ecosystem that the CWAY Group is investing heavily in state-of-the-art facilities to ensure that Nigerians have access to quality and safe water.
At every stage of production, there are human interventions to ensure that the processes are compliant with specified standards, he said.
“We have the quality control department who regularly check on the quality of the water, we also have independent bodies where we send our water to for testing to ensure we conform to regulatory standards. We also have some people that regularly visit the factory to confirm if we are in tune with regulatory standards as well.”
Fagbenro Oluranti, one of the senior officials of the company noted that the company was partnering with some local recycling companies whose duty it is to mop up all disposed pet bottles, crushing and recycling them for other uses.
Oluranti stated also that CWAY has an effective consumer complaints department that swiftly responds to public concerns over their products.
“We have the Consumer Complaints section that will carry out some investigation, pick up the sample to investigate and public complaints. But I can assure you that our quality control is topnotch at every stage of production.”
On his part, the Factory Manager, Gordian Azolum, highlighted that in 2018, CWAY was certified with the ISO22000 Food and Safety Management system and that they have an inbuilt system that monitors what they do in-house.
“It will interest you to know that we have not had issues related to health challenges. This is because we have competent hands that make sure that the systems put in place work.”
To prove that they are really walking the talks, the Production Manager, Maliki Philips, took journalists on a tour of facilities. But most interestingly, it was discovered the company, for certain reasons, does not use chlorine for the treatment of their water.
Maliki explained that CWAY water is being treated with Ozone (O3) at a controlled level. This, he said, leaves no aftertaste and leaves the water safe for consumption within its shelf life.
He narrated further that there are independent bodies that come from outside at regular intervals to pick up samples of their products for standardization tests.
