As the leading supplier of water-related equipment across the East African region, Davis and Shirtliff is committed to playing a vital role across the industry by offering a comprehensive and competitive product range. The company is focused on pioneering the industry with unrivalled technical and service support to ensure that every customer is met with only the best for all their water-related activity needs. However, for the company, a central focus is on community development, and helping ensure that those across the East African region have vital access to water-related equipment and resources, as well as sustainable solutions, to make every day a little easier.
Davis and Shirtliff was founded in 1946 with the goal of distributing high-quality equipment from industry-leading companies across the region. However, over the years it has developed its own manufacturing and assembly line of products to allow it to distribute its own products alongside those from leading manufacturers from around the world. Therefore, the company continues to put a key focus on infrastructure investment to allow it to expand its steady stream of distribution throughout the east of Africa and across international markets.
To facilitate this distribution, Davis and Shirtliff have roughly 900 highly trained employees across its operation. In Nairobi, the headquarters for Davis and Shirtliff provides 10,000 square metres of warehousing, manufacturing, and training and administration facilities. It is from here that the company ships production across the region and beyond via its own fleet of trucks. The in-house nature of its storage, manufacturing, training and shipping operations allows Davis and Shirtliff to ensure the quality of product and service remains extremely high.
In terms of products, Davis and Shirtliff’s business activities can be broken down into four central product sectors which are water pumps, water treatment, swimming pools and renewable energy products. Davis and Shirtliff provide a range of pumps including its own range Dayliff, and others including Grundfos, Davey, DAB and Rovatti Pompe. In addition to regular water pumps, the company also offers a range of borehole pumps and general machinery. This machinery includes a range of generators and engines, as well as accessories such as trimmers, mowers, and induction motors. For water treatment, Davis and Shirtliff provide a range of domestic treatment, reverse osmosis, and UV water treatment plants, alongside blowers, filters, softeners, chemicals, and water treatment media. Water pumps and treatment cover a wide range of Davis and Shirtliff’s manufacturing and distribution to help people across the region gain vital and clean access to water.
The company then also works to provide a range of swimming pool essentials such as filters, pumps, chemicals, chlorinators, accessories, spas, saunas, and fountain nozzles. However, one of the most interesting parts of Davis and Shirtliff’s operations is to provide renewable energy products. These include solar solutions such as solar panels and their accompanying support structure, solar water heaters, inverters, backup systems, solar pumps, digital solutions, energy storage systems and controls. To provide vital products and structures to facilitate renewable energy solutions, Davis and Shirtliff is both supporting the global movement towards carbon reduction, whilst also implementing vital infrastructure to support continued sustainable power generation for years to come. This is vital in remote areas where water infrastructure may not be as developed, to provide households, businesses, and local communities with the vital products to access water and maintain the water supply for future generations.
This focus on renewable energy highlights a vital part of Davis and Shirtliff’s purpose to give back to local communities. The community aspect of Davis and Shirtliff has been present since the company’s very beginning in 1946. To ensure giving back to the community remains a crucial part of Davis and Shirtliff’s operations it has launched the #ImprovingLives initiative which is helping to solve some of the most pressing challenges and unlock the potential of the communities through sustainable implementation. Davis and Shirtliff is focused on corporate strategies and interventions using a multi-sectional approach which is designed to end poverty, inequality, climate change and environmental degradation. Currently, there have been 1,066,248 beneficiaries from the initiative from across 6 countries and 545 projects.
In January this year, Davis and Shirtliff worked with The Upper Manza Community Based Organisation to help bring water and sanitation facilities to over 10,000 residents in Machakos County. The Upper Manza Community Based Organisation currently runs two high-yielding boreholes in the area to meet the existing demand of the community. However, the region has faced an increased rate for power over recent months. Therefore, bills for local residents have been extraordinarily high, and this has affected the running costs of the existing pumps and the operations of the organisation. This price increase in late 2023, threatened to interrupt the organisation’s project as it could not cover the costs. Consequently, Davis and Shirtliff’s initiative has implemented a 7.5-kilowatt borehole with the Upper Manza Community Based Organisation to help lower its operations costs and guarantee a constant and efficient water supply for the community. This borehole highlights the firm commitment by Davis and Shirtliff to implement vital resources and infrastructure across the region and ensure that 10,00 residents will now have reliable access to water resources.
For Davis and Shirtliff it has led the industry for over 75 years as a vital supplier of water-related equipment which is delivering vital products throughout Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and Ethiopia. This equipment and product line ensures that reliable access to water supplies is made more readily available for more communities. However, it seems the heart of Davis and Shirtliff is its commitment to giving back and supporting local organisations to ensure that people across Eastern Africa benefit from its operations and product lines. We look forward to seeing how Davis and Shirtliff continue to expand its distribution network and product line offerings as it continues to play a vital role as a supplier of vital water-related equipment across the continent.
