Windhoek
In light of the current water crisis, Namibia Dairies (ND) has pledged its commitment to assist the City of Windhoek and other role players by ensuring effective measures are in place for the business to save every possible drop of water.
“Even before a water crisis was declared by the City of Windhoek, we had realized that we were facing tough times in terms of water availability and that we should implement some actions to save water in order to ensure job security and sustainable production output at our plant at Avis,” said the Head: Technical at ND, Pieter van Wyk, who is stationed at the ND plant just outside Windhoek.
Van Wyk said that ND has made remarkable strides in saving water usage at its plant and operations. Van Wyk added: “We have a savings improvement of 40 percent (4200m³) since the start of our initiatives and this also represents a good improvement on the required City of Windhoek quota. The main indicator on savings however is the ratio of litres of water used per litre of product produced. This ratio has improved from 3.51l water to 2.61l water per litre product produced.”
A Water Crisis Committee (WCC) was established at ND to focus on the reduction of water usage, reclamation of usable water and the change in water consumption. Implemented measures and actions include additional flow meters which are monitored and noted on a daily basis; various buffer tanks, pumps and pipes to accumulate and redistribute the water; re-engineering of cleaning processes and programs; installation of water saving devices throughout the plant and ablution facilities; weekly WCC tracking meetings implemented and constant awareness discussions on all meeting platforms throughout the business. All three Windhoek-based ND operations, i.e ND Avis, ND Prosperita and Windhoek Schlachterei are included in the exercise.
Van Wyk said: “We had a very negative outlook on the situation at the beginning of the water crisis in terms of product supply, job stability, future business opportunities, etc. Fortunately we, as a Namibia Dairies team have become accustomed to face all sorts of challenges and we decided that this will also not hamper our spirit. This was an absolute team effort and all credit goes to the team who really thought out of the box and made things happen. Brilliant support and commitment was received from all supporting functions to get alignment on execution of actions.”