ELW Global undeterred by COVID-19 as field kitchen and water purification products continue to evolve

392

The recent interruption to business due to the COVID-19 pandemic has not deterred ELW Global from continuing to develop and update its most popular lines of manufacture, these being the mobile Diesel Field Kitchen (DFK) and the mobile Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit (ROWPU).

The ROWPU 2K is a trailer mounted mobile water treatment system with off-road capabilities. Its minimum production is 2 000 litres of treated water per hour, using reverse osmosis (RO), but it will produce 5 000 litres of fresh potable water per hour where reverse osmosis is not required. The unit is complete with a 5 000 litre water bladder and portable UV unit. It also has an integrated diesel generator so that it operates completely off-grid.

“It is very important to incorporate new technologies and materials in to our flagship products. We also have to take in to account the realities and difficulties in our raw material supply chain and make changes that not only speed up production, further improve the operation and reduce the size and weight of the units to make more shipment options available,” says Nick Miller, CEO of ELW Global.

“We recently commissioned a ROWPU in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and completed a comprehensive training programme. We were told the water source was a challenge but we always like a challenge!”

“The result was a total success,” Miller says. “At the end of the first day there were queues for our World Health Organisation (WHO) standard potable drinking water! We were more worried about running out of source water than anything else!”

ELW Global has recently shipped units to the DRC and Gambia and has now reduced production times to eight weeks from order.

Meanwhile, ELW Global’s Diesel Field Kitchens have also proven popular on the continent, with deliveries to Burkina Faso, Cameroon, South Africa and Zambia, amongst others.

The Field Kitchen is, along with ELW Global’s mobile Reverse Osmosis Water Purification Unit, the most popular ELW Global products, with more than 250 of each currently in operation in harsh environments, principally with United Nations missions such as MINUSMA, MONUSCO and AMISOM in Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia respectively.