The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Stress on good manufacturing practices for packaged water

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Sunday, Jul 27, 2008
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Stress on good manufacturing practices for packaged water

Staff Reporter

Seminar focusses on technologies for processing drinking water

— Photo: M. Karunakaran

IN DISCUSSION: ( From left) Institute of Standards Engineers Secretary V.V.Chandrasekaran, BIS DDG K.Anbarasu and ISE chairman C.S. Ram interacting at a seminar in Chennai on Saturday.

CHENNAI: At a seminar conducted on packaged drinking water here on Saturday, officials from the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) underscored the need for adhering to good manufacturing practices. The seminar, primarily meant for manufacturers, focussed on methods to deal with microbial contamination of water and technologies available for processing drinking water.

“Manufacturing packaged drinking water [in the country] is today a Rs.1,200-crore industry, which is growing at the rate of 15 to 20 per cent annually,” Deputy Director-General (Southern Region) of BIS K. Anbarasu said.

Owing to public health and safety aspects involved in its consumption, BIS certification for packaged drinking water was made compulsory in 2000. He said Chennai currently had 200 licensed water manufacturers, a list of which was available on www.bis.org.in.

Buyers of packaged drinking water could look for ISI code IS14543 meant for packaged drinking water. The ISI code for mineral water is IS13428. “Every licensed packet/bottle of drinking water would have a seven digit licence number displayed below the ISI mark, which can be verified for its genuineness from any of our labs,” he said.

Mr. Anbarasu also drew attention to the fact that ‘white cans’ for drinking water had been banned because it had a “leaching effect” on water. He emphasised the need for employing qualified lab technicians in the water manufacturing unit to assess the quality of drinking water.

G. Vinayagamoorthy of Akshaya Aqua Farms, one of the 30-odd participants in the seminar, found the entire session quite useful. He said water containers were a common source of contamination since most of the manufacturers were reusing plastic cans for storing water up to 40 times. The session on effective cleaning of containers stressed on the use of hot water and food-graded detergent for cleaning the cans, he said.

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