On April 27 members of the Douglas Rotary Club attended a luncheon hosted by Premium Waters at their 675 Thompson Drive bottling plant. General Manager Mike Lord gave a short informative presentation while members of the Rotary Club ate sandwiches. A tour of the plant followed the presentation.
Premium Waters, Inc., opened its Douglas plant in October of 2008. About 110 people are now employed at the location. The workforce is divided into thirds. One third of the employees make bottles, one third perform maintenance, and one third bottle the water itself. They produce approximately one million bottles per day in five different sizes: ten-ounce bottles, one-half-liter bottles, twenty-ounce bottles, one-gallon jugs, and two-and-a-half gallon jugs. To make the containers they heat a plastic resin and then blow it into a form using heated, compressed air. The most popular product is the twenty-ounce bottle and they produce 50 to 55 million per month.
Employees fill the containers with three different types of water: spring water shipped in from a natural source in Abbeville; purified water that is drawn from an on-site well, then filtered; and distilled water drawn from the same well but vaporized and condensed, rendering it almost 100 percent pure. The bottling plant operates 362 days per year. Around-the-clock operations cease only on Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, and Easter Sunday.
Premium Waters, Inc., is a privately held company. It is owned by Cy Chesterman, whose family has been in the bottling business for five generations. Greg Nemec is the President of Premium Waters, Inc. The company has $350 million in sales annually with eight facilities.
While giving his presentation, Mike Lord said that prior to opening in Douglas, Greg Nemec and Cy Chesterman met Joanne Lewis, the former Coffee County Chamber of Commerce President and Economic Development Authority Executive Director. It was after this meeting that Premium Waters decided to come to Douglas and occupy the present site of their local operation.
Premium Waters produces private label products. These products are made for retailers such as Wal-Mart, Sam’s Club, or Kroger. The bottles bear the labels of those retailers when shipped. The average employee at Premium Waters begins making $11.75 an hour and after 90 days is given a $.50 raise. The company receives around 100 to 150 online applications monthly.