B & C Aluminum Plc, a local pioneer in aluminum production, invested over 410 million Br to set up a water bottling plant, in Aregobena Wereda of Sidama Zone.

Garanba Bottling Plc, which is located 345Km south of Addis Abeba, rests on six hectares of land and uses groundwater from Garanba Mountain, which is  3,000m above sea level. Branded as South Spring, the water is packed in 0.33lt, 0.6lt, 1.2lt and two-litre bottles.

The owners of the company invested four million euros in importing the machinery from Germany. The Krones Beverage Industry Group, a company that builds technologically-advanced machinery for the water bottling and beverage industry, supplied the machinery.

It took seven years for Garanba Bottling to complete the construction of the plant, according to Berhanu Getahun, board chairperson of the company, adding that the major challenges were securing foreign currency to import the machinery and installing an 11Km pipeline from the mountain to the plant.

"The launch of the plant was delayed by three months because of the political instability in the southern regional state," said Berhanu.

The plant can pack 16,000 bottles of water an hour and plans to increase this to 32,000 bottles an hour after six months. The plant has opened jobs for 310 workers.

The inauguration of the plant is expected to take place today, Sunday, September 15, 2019, and the water will be on the market the next day. South Spring will be the 86th bottler, which supplies just five percent of total consumption in Ethiopia, which has a population above 100 million. This is far below Kenya, which has a population of 51 million and has 600 water bottling companies.

To distribute the product, the company has built three warehouses in Hawassa, Modjo and Addis Abeba, which will also be used as distribution centres.