Power, water, logistics and land - the site checklist that decides your plant's performance before the machines arrive.
Buyers spend weeks comparing machine specifications and thirty minutes choosing where the machines will stand. It is backwards. A site is a ten-year decision that shapes every day of production after it: the voltage that reaches your motors, the water that enters your RO, the road your container truck arrives on, and the labour pool your shifts draw from.
This guide is the site checklist to complete before any machinery order - power, water, logistics, labour and land - so that the plant you later buy from our product range performs on day one the way its quote promises. The machine-side planning lives in our plant guides; this is the ground under them.
Factor 1Machinery warranties die on bad power faster than on any other cause - voltage swings cook heaters and controllers. Before choosing a site, get three facts in writing from the utility or landlord:
Your peak draw plus 20 percent headroom, confirmed by the utility - not promised verbally. A starter line needs 25-40 kW; a jar plant with a blow machine, 60-100 kW.
Ask neighbours on the same feeder how many daily outages and how deep the voltage dips run. Their answer is your maintenance forecast.
On any swing-prone grid, a servo stabiliser sized to your load is not optional equipment - it protects the machines and the warranty. Budget $2,000-$6,000.
Daily-outage grids need a generator for the filling line and RO at minimum - $4,000-$10,000. Half-filled product from a sudden stop costs more than the genset.
For beverage plants, the water source is a product decision, not just a utility one. Before committing to any site: get the borehole, well or municipal supply laboratory-tested - TDS, hardness, iron, chloride and pH, exactly per our RO sizing guide. A 1,500 TDS source needs a bigger, pricier plant than a 300 TDS one - a difference you want in the site decision, not discovered after the shed is built. And remember cooling: the plant needs process water for chillers and moulds on top of product water.
Your machinery arrives in a 20-foot container on a trailer - and your raw materials arrive the same way, every month, for the life of the plant. Check three things about the port road:
Container trailers need usable roads the entire distance. A beautiful site down an impassable last kilometre is a storage unit.
Get a local transport quote for the port-to-site leg before buying - per our shipping guide, it is part of the real landed cost.
Jar routes, oil distribution, spare deliveries - the site that is near your customers earns back its rent in diesel every month.
Operators can be trained - our commissioning includes structured training, and the guides on this site carry the daily habits. What a site must already offer is at least one technically-minded person: someone who can read a gauge, hold a multimeter and respect a maintenance log. Look for a nearby industrial town, a technical school, or a pool of generator and pump mechanics - plant neighbourhoods matter.
Existing power connections, better roads, simpler permits, neighbours sharing infrastructure. Slightly higher rent buys away most first-plant surprises.
Lower long-term cost and room to expand - but you build the connections, and the connection fees often erase the saving. Run the numbers honestly.
Budget 2-3 times your first-phase footprint. The plant that grows needs space for the blow machine, the second tank, the jar yard - not a costly relocation.
The RO room needs its own floor drain; the wash area too. Flat, drained land beats cheap sloped land - retrofitting drainage is misery.
Visit the shortlisted site once, checklist in hand, and you will learn more than a month of phone calls:
Photograph the transformer and meter, ask the connected load, note the stabiliser space, and get the outage story from three neighbouring businesses.
Fill a clean bottle from the actual source and send it to a lab that week. Ask where the RO room would stand.
Drive the port road yourself in the worst season you can. Note the last kilometre especially.
Pace out the linear flow from our plant layouts - dirty end to clean end - plus storage and expansion space.
At the local authority: industrial use permission, pollution consent process, timeline. An hour here saves a quarter of a year.
The rent saved disappears into freight, diesel and staff transport - permanently. Total logistics beats land price every year.
Building first, testing water second discovers problems when the money is spent. Test first - it costs almost nothing.
A connection sized exactly to today's machines blocks tomorrow's. Overbuild the connection once; never queue for an upgrade twice.
The $3,000 stabiliser skipped to save money voids warranties and eats heaters. It is the cheapest insurance in the plant - per the warranty guide.
Industrial zones usually win for first plants: existing power connections, better roads, simpler permits and neighbours who share infrastructure problems. Private land is cheaper but you build and maintain everything - the connection fees often erase the saving.
A starter bottling line draws 25-40 kW, a mid-size plant 40-80 kW and a turnkey jar plant with a blow machine 60-100 kW. Ask the utility for a confirmed connection capacity above your peak - and install a stabiliser on any grid with voltage swings.
On any grid with daily interruptions, yes - sized to run the filling line and RO at reduced load, if not the blow machine. Outages do not just stop production; unstable shutdowns risk half-filled product and machine stress.
Water first, ports second - within reason. A machine importing water by tanker is a permanent cost; a port 300 km further is a one-time freight difference. But test the water before buying the land, not after.
Container delivery to most African, Gulf and Asian inland sites works routinely at 200-600 km from port. Beyond that, inland transport costs climb and road damage risk grows - budget it per the quote and confirm the road can carry a container truck.
Send your power details, water test and port distance - we confirm the utility requirements for your exact plant layout and flag any gaps, within 24 hours.