“I wanted to also have a career and there was none that I could pursue, so I had to create something for myself,” Williams explains. “My husband at the time, his family drank from that spring, so they were quite familiar with that water and the water quality. So, we went and did the formal testing of the water and realized that it was excellent water.” The analysis revealed ideal concentrations of calcium, potassium, and magnesium, minerals essential for human health that develop naturally as rainwater percolates through the Blue Mountains’ metamorphic and igneous rocks for over a decade. What began as necessity has evolved into Jamaica’s only NSF International-certified bottled water company. Lifespan Company Limited now celebrates its 20th anniversary in a global bottled water market projected to reach $406 billion by 2030. Williams built her operation around a spring that produces over 900 gallons per minute, though the company currently extracts only a fraction of its licensed capacity. FROM PANDEMIC DISRUPTION TO GROWTH The global bottled water industry faced unprecedented challenges during COVID-19, with supply chain disruptions affecting companies worldwide. For island nations like Jamaica, these disruptions proved particularly severe, creating cascading effects that tested even well-established businesses. Lifespan experienced the full force of these market pressures, watching costs spiral and operations strain under unprecedented circumstances. “It did impact us in a negative way, not just being able to deliver to our customers in the beginning because that was a challenge which affected us,” Williams recalls. “But further down, we also had issues where our suppliers outside of Jamaica and inside of Jamaica had issues delivering as well. So, we came upon a situation where our shipping costs went up by 500%, like many other businesses, I’m sure.” The crisis forced creative problem-solving when equipment parts became unavailable. Williams describes how her engineering team implemented temporary fixes that later created new problems.“Our engineering team had to come up with solutions and most of these were band aid solutions.And because of that coming out of that whole period, then you had situations like in the beginning of 2024, we had a situation with one of our major equipment going down because there were so many band aid solutions.” Recovery proved robust once supply chains stabilized. 55 BUSINESS VIEW CARIBBEAN VOLUME 12, ISSUE 07 LIFESPAN COMPANY LIMITED
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