Alternative Water Supplier Opens New £1 Million Depot in Nottinghamshire to Expand its Offering to the Midlands and North of England

The launch day saw invited guests and stakeholders, including colleagues from a number of the country’s water utility companies, enjoy a tour of the site and demonstration of the company’s equipment and services.

The group was treated to a champagne lunch and official ribbon-cutting ceremony hosted by the Water Direct team. Oliver Silcock, Head of Operations at Water Direct, hosted a ‘show-and-tell’ which highlighted some of the company’s unique solutions, including its state-of-the-art, dedicated drinking water tankers.

Guests were shown the unique features of the vehicles which enable bulk water deliveries nationwide and feature unique pumping equipment designed to facilitate safe network injections. A technique that Water Direct has pioneered over many years as an innovative means to provide surrogate supply during an interruption on both a planned and emergency basis.

Oliver explained how the vehicles are equipped with specialist pumps that inject water directly into the mains network at a pre-defined pressure and flow rate. Once programmed with the desired parameters, the system will read the pressure and flow rates and automatically adjust accordingly.

Guests were also given the chance to explore other solutions first-hand such as static drinking water tanks, and the deployment of Arlington boxes and bottled water as emergency measures.

Water Direct Senior Contract Manager Rob Allan talked in detail with the assembled guests about the company’s wholesaler contract services, including emergency support through the Nationwide Bottled Water Bank and innovative ideas developed in partnership with water wholesaler partners such as doorstep deliveries to vulnerable customers and ‘emergency pod’ deployments.

These ‘pop-up’ stations are delivered to site as part of larger scale bottled water deployments and serve as visible bottled water handout stations, helping on-site staff to manage bottled water collection points and safely manage traffic and pedestrians. Rob also explained in detail how Water Direct is committed to helping water companies towards their challenging targets to reduce leakage and supply interruption time, alongside improving customer experience going into the industry’s AMP7 investment program.

Con Canny, Network Manager at Affinity Water who was in attendance, said “Water Direct’s innovation demonstration and tour were most informative, it is reassuring for us to know that we are working with such a capable company.”

Rhys Addison, Alternative Supplies Technician at Severn Trent Water added “I was glad to be part of the opening of Water Direct’s brand new depot in Mansfield. It was an amazing opportunity to see what the future of Water Direct looks like and seeing how their innovative ideas have come to life.”

Alongside emergency work, with its excellent access routes the Mansfield base will further improve Water Direct’s ability to assist water companies with ongoing programs of general maintenance to the network and new equipment installation as well as serving other sectors such as construction and events which also form part of the company’s key markets.

Jonathan West, Managing Director at Water Direct said,“While the site has been operational since May, we really wanted to celebrate the official opening with further chance to demonstrate our capability.”

“This official opening day follows a program of partner engagement sessions across our key locations which have proven to be very successful. We’re more than happy to host our customers and partners to talk about how we strengthen our relationships and find innovative ways to work together.”

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