Water Treatment and Laboratory Department

This is the smallest department in the company in terms of size, but the department, which provides a lot of services to the company and the community as a whole. The department is to ensure uninterrupted supply of water for industrial use and also the supply of potable drinking water for domestic use. The water provided for industrial use is what is used to generate steam, which goes to drive the turbines to provide electricity. The electricity generated is used to run all the machines in the company for production to proceed smoothly. The department also plays another important role in the Plymill where we carry out some tests to control the quality of the plywood produced for export and the local markets.

The department has a work force of 20, comprising one expatriate head, one management trainee, nine operators, four plywood quality controllers and five apprentices. The department has two filtration plants. Filtration no.1 supplies water to the industrial area, Aboi and Nsuakyi whilst filtration no.2 supplies water to the bungalows and Bekwai Township. We produce about 140,000-150,000 gallons of water a day.

What we do at our department is to treat the raw water (river water) into potable drinking water for industrial and domestic use. When we talk of water treatment, we mean by letting the raw water undergo both physical and chemical processes in order to obtain safe drinking water. We use three types of chemicals for our water treatment processes. The chemicals are aluminium sulphate (alum), sodium carbonate (soda ash) and calcium hypochlorite (which contains the chlorine).

After getting our potable drinking water, we do not end there but do some analysis of the water. Our water quality compares favourably with that of international standards. We are constantly trying to improve the water quality. For the past one year there has been a change in the quality of the water especially with regards to the colour. This improvement has been as a result of the new filter sand in use at the moment, which is of a better quality than the old sand filler.