Business View Caribbean - August 2015 67
new, 9000 square foot facility, there. Operating costs
were reduced significantly because the new plant was
so close to the spring, and sales increased rapidly,
as well, from over $30 million in 2010, to over $100
million by 2012. Just this year, Lifespan expanded
is warehouse space to over 15,000 square feet and
upgraded to a fully automated system which now in-
volves blowing its own bottles - a feature which could
cut production costs an additional 40 percent. The
company’s 35 employees currently bottle 1600 cases
per day of the 500 milliliter size (with 24 bottles to a
case), and 800 cases of the 5-liter size, as well.
Lifespan doesn’t have to pay for its water, but it does
need an extraction license from Jamaica’s Water Re-
source Authority, allowing it to bottle whatever amount
is stipulated on the license. And that amount is based
on its determination of the spring’s rate of flow. Cur-
rently, the company is extracting only a fraction of
what its license allows, which means that Lifespan has
a huge potential for further growth.
And it’s that potential that Lifespan wishes to exploit
by touting its water’s healthful qualities, as well as its
higher alkalinity character in relation to the world’s
other bottled waters. According to the Scientific Re-
search Council (SRC) of Jamaica, Lifespan water has
a higher pH value (a measure of acidity or alkalinity in
which the pH of pure water is 7, with lower numbers in-
dicating acidity and higher numbers indicating alkalin-
ity) than all other brands in the western hemisphere.
In fact, the company favorably contrasts it water’s pH
of 7.9, against world-leading, Fiji water’s pH of 7.5, and
France’s Evian water’s pH of 7.2.
Regarding Lifespan’s health benefits, Williams is clear:
