Remember my article here, about how the Coconut Water industry was set to grow to over $1 billion? Well, the industry has indeed grown, and most analysts agree it has passed the billion dollar mark. It’s grown so big, even the Chinese are now throwing money at the stuff (see another story here). And here look, coffee!

Some companies are already mixing the stuff with Cafe Late. How neat is that?

On the subject of business ideas, I saw this today, during my walks:

A car park near MediaCity, the BBC’s new home in Salford. The building has a supermarket, a cafe, some restaurants and at least two lifts. But essentially, it’s a car park.

Standing there in rush hour traffic it wasn’t hard to notice just how busy the place was. Lots and lots of cars driving in every minute. By any measure it’s a lucrative business, and the owner of the car park must be raking it in. Mind you, in the UK, the car parking industry (local authority sector) is worth around £1.5 billion.

Now, I’ve seen such car parks before. In the UK, in the US, in France, even in China. I’ve seen shopping malls which look as if they are firstly a car park, and only secondly a Shopping Mall – atleast by virtue of the enormous size of the car park.

But my point is, as infrustructure across Africa develops, it will be interesting to see if more establishments adopt such integrated and somewhat commercially focussed methods of utilising space.

While countries with better performing economies in Africa (like South Africa, Kenya and Botswana) are likely to already have such structures which have various businesses within a car park, growing up in Malawi, I don’t remember ever seeing anything like this. But again, that was a long time ago.