Elkay, a leading manufacturer of award-winning drinking water products, is pleased to announce that lead times on several bottle filling station SKUs have returned to normal. In addition, despite ongoing supplier challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, production lead times have significantly improved on many water delivery products.

Since launching over ten years ago, Elkay ezH2O bottle fillers have saved more than 40 billion singleuse plastic bottles from ending up in landfills and have become a highly sought-after product across many industries. Demand for Elkay’s hands-free products, especially the ezH2O, has steadily increased in past years, and the company has seen immense growth as a result of the pandemic.

“We’ve seen an exponential increase in demand for our hands-free products,” said Kraig Kniss, vice president of operations for Elkay’s plumbing business. Elkay has mitigated their operation and supply chain challenges significantly over the last 18 months to meet the growing demand for hands-free hydration solutions.

“Where previously convenience, taste and sustainability were among the leading drivers of demand for these products,” Kniss said. "The recent pandemic has led building managers across the nation and around the world to re-examine how they are meeting the need to provide access to drinking water in their public spaces.”

Elkay’s expansion of its production and distribution facilities are part of the company’s ongoing efforts to increase American manufacturing and provide new jobs throughout the US. Elkay continues to invest in its US capacity for fabricating drinking water products and have added a new plant to its network. Additional distribution locations have also been added, allowing for decreased lead times and faster delivery to customers and helping drive company growth.

“The teams at Elkay have worked very hard to ensure product availability as best as possible,” said Franco Savoni, Elkay’s senior vice president of sales. “From getting new equipment installed in the Lanark plant, to overcoming the labor shortages this past summer, all the while managing supply chain and freight constraints, we’ve had support from Supply Chain, Operations, Engineering, and Product Management on our end to ensure that we never shut down production.”

Although supply chain challenges are inevitable, several of Elkay’s drinking water SKUs are back to normal lead times, including the Standard Single EZ Wall-mounted ADA Cooler, and Enhanced Single Wall-mounted Bottle Filling Stations. Elkay is positioned to be back to normal lead times for all drinking water products in early Q2 2022.