Global water technology company based in Sweden, Bluewater has partnered with I-Drop to provide better access to clean drinking water and reduce single-use plastic bottle use. Bluewater sells its water purifier solutions across Europe, the USA, China and South-East Asia. I-Drop Water designs, builds and installs drinking water purification and dispensing machines in general grocery stores at no capital cost and shares ongoing revenue from water sales with store owners.
It is reported that residents in Kimberly posted pictures on social media of murky water flowing from their taps since last year when the municipality started the maintenance work. Municipality spokesperson, Sello Matsie said it was normal for the water to have a slight discolouration because of the maintenance work. He added that “nowhere in South Africa is there contaminated water which is supplied to people but even the cleanest water found in Sweden is not purified up to the level of still water.
“Bringing I-Drop Water into the Bluewater family strengthens the fast-track approach to bringing our water solutions technology market proposition to South Africa and elsewhere in Africa,” says Anders Jacobson, Co-founder of Blue AB. He notes how I-Drop has quickly built a strongly growing market position in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Botswana.
Bluewater specializes in water purification solutions for home, commercial and public drinking stations, on the other hand, I-Drop designs builds and installs drinking water purification and dispensing machines. Together, the two companies aim to improve local access to water purification solutions that process almost any source of water into drinkable water.
Formed in 2015 by James and Kate Steere, I-Drop uses nano-purification water filtration technology and a GSM-enabled platform to empower grocery store owners to purify and sell safe, affordable drinking water to their customers. Shoppers refill multi-use containers and pay by the 1 litre for the drinking water they need, an innovative approach that saw the couple win the 2017 All Africa Business Leader Award for Innovator of the Year, hosted by CNBC Africa and Forbes Africa.
“Bluewater’s unique patented second-generation reverse osmosis water purifiers for home, commercial and public dispensers are the ideal complement to our product offering. Thanks to Bluewater’s stated mission to bring access to clean water to everyone everywhere and contribute to ending the scourge of the single-use plastic, we are uniquely positioned jointly to tackle two of Africa’s biggest challenges – clean drinking water availability and plastic waste,” Kate Steere said.
