Everyone needs clean drinking water, and a refill station looks simple: a tank, some filters, a tap. The hard parts are the permits, keeping the water safe, and knowing each evening whether the station made money. Here they are, in the order you will meet them.
This is general information, not legal advice. Rules and fees change and differ by county, so confirm what you need with KEBS and your county before you spend money.
The permits and standards you need
Start with KEBS. The Kenya Bureau of Standards publishes a checklist for water bottlers, Bottling Water Requirements. Read it even if you will only refill customers' containers: it shows what KEBS expects from anyone treating and packing drinking water. Then ask KEBS which permit your setup needs: refills only, sealed bottles under your own label, or both.
The checklist asks for:
- Documents: a public health hygiene licence, medical certificates for staff, a county business licence, and a water permit if you use borehole water.
- Standards: KS EAS 153 for packaged drinking water and KS 459 Part 9, the code of hygiene. KEBS's Standards Information Centre has copies.
- A person in charge of quality, trained in chemistry, biology, food technology, water technology or similar.
- Records: a signed scheme of supervision and control, a schedule of water tests with an accredited lab (or your own), a cleaning schedule and a complaints procedure.
- The room: tiled floors, waterproof walls, screened windows, handwashing with soap, a footbath and protective clothing. Raw and treated water tanks must not be shared, and only your staff should reach them.
If KEBS says you need the Standardization Mark (S-Mark), apply on its KIMS portal and KEBS inspects the site. Fees depend on the size of the business; the smallest firms pay a Ksh 10,000 inspection fee per site, before VAT (KEBS FAQ, November 2024). KEBS's fee list calls these annual fees, so ask whether you pay it every year. The permit lasts two years and covers one site only, so choose the site before you apply.
County business permit. Each county sets its fees in its own Finance Act, so the fee in Eldoret may differ from the one in Kisumu. Apply on your county's portal or at its revenue office. Under the County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act, 2024, an application the county has not decided within 28 days counts as approved, with some exceptions, and the licence lasts a year.
Public health. The county public health office inspects the premises before issuing the hygiene licence; ask it where staff should get their medical certificates.
Water tests. Test the raw water before buying equipment: the results decide the treatment you need. After you open, test on a schedule agreed with KEBS and the lab. KEBS accepts reports from labs accredited to ISO/IEC 17025, so ask to see the accreditation, ask for tests against KS EAS 153, and file every report.
Borehole water. You need a water use permit from the Water Resources Authority (WRA), which you can apply for online. In January 2025 WRA warned borehole owners of fines of up to Ksh 1 million for not renewing permits.
Excise duty. KRA had treated refilling as bottling since 2020, with an excise licence and stamps. The Finance Act 2026 removed excise duty on bottled water from 1 July 2026, but KRA's notice does not mention refills by name, so confirm with KRA.
Equipment: what to ask suppliers for
Show your raw-water results to every supplier and ask what each part of their system removes. A common setup has:
- A covered raw-water tank.
- Sediment and carbon filters.
- The main treatment, often reverse osmosis (RO), which pushes water through a very fine membrane.
- A germ-killing step, such as ultraviolet (UV) light.
- A covered tank for treated water, and filling taps.
- A bottle washing area, and a cap sealer if you sell sealed bottles.
Get at least three written quotes and compare:
- litres of treated water per hour;
- litres of raw water used per litre of treated water, since RO sends some down the drain;
- what filter and membrane changes cost, and how often;
- installation, training and repairs.
Ask for a meter on the treated-water line too, to check each day's litres. Prices vary a lot with capacity and brand, so let written quotes, not adverts, set your budget.
Where to put the station
- Near homes and foot traffic: in an estate, by a market or a stage, on a ground floor a customer can reach carrying a 20-litre bottle.
- Reliable water and power: ask neighbours how often the taps run dry and the power goes. Pumps and RO need both.
- Drainage for bottle washing and RO waste water.
- A separate entrance if people live in the building, and tanks nobody else shares, as KEBS asks.
- Room to compete: before you sign a lease, visit every station within walking distance and note their prices, queues and cleanliness.
Pricing per litre and per bottle size
Work out what a litre costs you first. The water itself is the small part. In Nakuru, NAWASSCO's approved tariff for commercial customers using up to 50 cubic metres a month is Ksh 135 per cubic metre, or 1,000 litres (gazetted May 2025). That is Ksh 0.135 a litre. The same notice adds a 5% sanitation levy. If you are on the sewer, sewerage adds Ksh 115 per cubic metre. The tariff can also rise with inflation each July from July 2026, so use the total from your own bill. If your RO uses 2 litres for every litre it makes (ask your supplier for the real figure), the water alone costs Ksh 0.27 per litre sold. Find your own water company's tariff on WASREB's register.
The bigger costs are rent, pay, power, filters, tests and permits, plus the bottle when you sell sealed water. In a July 2026 letter, the chair of the Water Bottlers Association of Kenya put an empty one-litre bottle at around Ksh 9.80. That is why small sizes must cost more per litre.
Example (made-up prices, to show the method):
| Size | Price (Ksh) | Price per litre (Ksh) |
|---|---|---|
| 20-litre refill | 100 | 5.00 |
| 10-litre refill | 60 | 6.00 |
| 5-litre refill | 40 | 8.00 |
| 1-litre sealed bottle | 30 | 30.00 |
Say rent, the attendant's pay, power, filters, tests and permits (spread over the year) come to Ksh 45,000 a month: Ksh 1,500 a day. A 20-litre refill uses Ksh 5.40 of water (20 × 0.27), so it leaves Ksh 94.60. You need 1,500 ÷ 94.60 = 15.9, so 16 such refills a day, before the station earns anything.
Keep prices simple:
- Sell a new bottle as the bottle's price plus a refill, so customers see what the bottle costs.
- Use round prices: easy to pay by M-Pesa, easy to give change.
Delivery without losing bottles
Delivery wins regular customers (shops, offices, schools, homes), but every trip costs money. If a boda trip costs Ksh 100 (an example figure), one refill per trip leaves 94.60 − 100, a loss of Ksh 5.40. Three refills on one trip leave 3 × 94.60 − 100 = Ksh 183.80. Set a minimum order or a delivery fee, and group customers by area and day.
Every 20-litre bottle is money, so count them. The rider posts each drop in the staff WhatsApp group: customer, full bottles left, empties collected, amount paid, cash or M-Pesa. Keep a running count of your bottles at each customer, and ask new customers for a deposit or sell them the bottle.
Risiti's customer tools show who buys how often and who is late for their usual order, and RouteIQ plans the van's day: which towns and customers to visit and what to load.
The four numbers to check every evening
- Litres sold per station. Turn every sale into litres: 30 twenty-litre refills is 600 litres. Compare it with the treated-water meter. A big gap means leaks, spills, free water for friends, or sales nobody wrote down.
- Bottles out and back. Full bottles that left, empties that came back, bottles still with customers.
- Cost per litre. The day's costs divided by litres sold.
- What's left. Sales minus the day's costs.
Example (made-up numbers, the same station):
| Sold today | Litres | Ksh |
|---|---|---|
| 30 × 20-litre refills | 600 | 3,000 |
| 10 × 10-litre refills | 100 | 600 |
| 12 × 5-litre refills | 60 | 480 |
| 20 × 1-litre sealed bottles | 20 | 600 |
| Total | 780 | 4,680 |
Costs: Ksh 1,500, the day's share of running costs; water, 780 × 0.27 = Ksh 211; bottle, cap and label for the 20 sealed bottles at an example Ksh 13 each, Ksh 260. Total: Ksh 1,971.
- Cost per litre: 1,971 ÷ 780 = Ksh 2.53.
- What's left: 4,680 − 1,971 = Ksh 2,709.
- Bottles: the rider dropped 12 full bottles and brought back 10 empties, so 2 more of your bottles are with customers. Note who has them.
If your attendants already post sales in a WhatsApp group, Risiti reads screenshots of those reports or an exported chat, adds your M-Pesa messages without counting a sale twice, and shows each station's totals and what's left every day.
What to do today
- Download KEBS's checklist and ask KEBS which permit a station like yours needs.
- Have your raw water tested by an accredited lab before buying equipment.
- Look up your water tariff on WASREB's register and work out your cost per litre.
- Visit three nearby stations and write down their prices.
- Ask your county what the business permit and hygiene licence cost.
- Start a daily sheet: litres sold, bottles out and back, cost per litre, what's left.
Sources
- KEBS: Bottling Water Requirements
- KEBS: quality assurance FAQ, November 2024
- Kenya Law: County Licensing (Uniform Procedures) Act, 2024
- WRA: water use permits
- Kenya News Agency: WRA notice, January 2025
- KRA: excise duty on water refill, July 2020
- KRA: removal of excise duty on bottled water, July 2026
- WASREB: NAWASSCO tariff, May 2025
- WASREB: register of licences and tariffs
- The Star: Water Bottlers Association letter, July 2026