A STATE-OF-THE-ART water fountain designed and put together on the Border is dispensing filtered water as far away as Canada, Mexico and Denmark.
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The design-based company MeetPAT – which is a play on meet the “tap” backwards – started making portable and permanent water bottle refill stations and drinking fountains in Albury three years ago.
It will install hundreds of units around the country and overseas this year.
MeetPAT co-founder Nick Roseby, who hails from Beechworth, said he was pleasantly surprised with the uptake of the sustainable design, which had bridged a gap in the market.
The light-weight units are connected to a tap or tank to provide filtered water.
“Our holistic message is that we’re getting people to drink tap water instead of bottled water or sugary drinks from clean water stations,” he said.
Mr Roseby and his Queensland-based counterpart Nick Robinson, who both studied industrial design at the University of Canberra and worked as senior designers at Breville, started MeetPAT in Sydney after they became disillusioned with traditional business models.
“We spent a lot of time in the biggest factories in the world and it became quite uninspiring,” Mr Roseby said.
“We wanted to do something with more social aspirations; we were drawn to doing something for the environment and something with a community focus.”
Together with his Albury-born wife Sarah, Mr Roseby moved to Albury under the NSW government’s Regional Relocation Grant Scheme. They now have two children Moss, 3, and Eve, 18 months. MeetPAT has seven permanent employees as well as service staff in Sydney and Canberra.
“We do business better in Albury-Wodonga; we get better support from local suppliers and get faster turnaround,” Mr Roseby said.
City of Wodonga, Xavier High School Albury and Yarrunga Early Learning Centre have MeetPAT water fountains, which range from knee-high to 2.1 metres.
The units cost $3000, which can be offset with branding and advertising.