Manish Ice Factory

The RIICO Industrial Area E-3 is mostly just concrete and metal, and Manish Ice Factory fits right in. It’s a loud place because of the compressors and the hum of the freezing tanks. We don’t have a front office or a place for people to sit down. Most of the work involves moving heavy blocks of ice onto the back of trucks. The floor is always wet, so we have to wear heavy rubber boots all day long. It gets very cold inside the main room, which is a bit of a relief when the sun is beating down on the industrial area outside. We spend a lot of time checking the water levels and making sure the molds are set right. It’s physical work, and your hands get numb after a while, even with gloves. We don’t really talk to many people other than the drivers and the workers from the nearby units. There isn't any fancy marketing here; we just make ice and sell it to whoever needs it for their businesses or for cooling things down. The walls are mostly bare and the lighting is just some basic tubes hanging from the ceiling. It’s a plain building for a plain job. We start early and we stay until the last truck is loaded and gone. Sometimes the machinery breaks down and we have to fix it ourselves in the middle of the night.