Rail Neer bottle to get thinner, taller, sleeker

Popular with train travellers, the Rail Neer bottle is getting a face-lift that will make it sleeker in design, longer in shape and more curvaceous at the top for a better grip.
Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has taken the decision driven by the need to make Rail Neer more competitive through reducing the manufacturing cost of the bottle in which it is packaged while not compromising the purity standards.
The new bottle has been designed by a French company, Sidel, a global provider of solutions for liquid packaging.
"Our plant at Ambernath in Maharashtra has already started manufacturing the new attractive design of Rail Neer bottles and they are available in trains and at railway stations," said IRCTC Chairman and Managing Director A K Manocha.

The newly designed bottle costs less because of the cheaper raw material as the weight has been reduced from 21.5 gram to 19.5 gram.
Three of the other Rail Neer plants at Nangloi (Delhi), Danapur (Bihar) and Palur (Chennai) would be adopting the cost-effective, passenger-friendly new design soon, Manocha said.

"Rail Neer is the purest packaged water that is manufactured in fully automated conditions, and the chances of contamination don't exist. Not a single sample of Rail Neer has ever failed in outside lab testing," he pointed out.
The oldest Rail Neer plant at Nangloi, for instance, has a testing lab that conducts tests at various stages to ensure the quality of water. Apart from its own labs, it has outsourced the job to Shriram Institute for outside testing.

Citing reasons for the need to economise the operational cost of packaged water, Manocha said Rail Neer plants are lesser in number as compared with those of private players.
"IRCTC has to transport its water bottles to a very long distance whereas private companies have set up their manufacturing units at the places where there is a big demand. This helps them in reducing the transportation cost which, in turn, reflects in their production cost," he explained.
In 2014-15, Rail Neer plants produced 11.8 crore bottles with a turnover of Rs 96 crore as against 10.45 crore bottles and Rs 88.17 crore, respectively in the previous year. For the fiscal 2015-16, the target is to produce 16 crore bottles with a turnover of Rs 120 crore.

The daily need of packaged water over the country's railway network is 2.5 million bottles a day. The existing capacity of four Rail Neer plants is 6.14 lakh bottles a day.