Featured | Apr 26,2019
Avante Water, a brand of Turkish company General Group Beverages (GGB), joined the Ethiopian bottled water market as the 78th bottler on April 4, 2019.
With its factory located in Debre Birhan, the brand took 180 million Br to launch. With a permit from the Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise on November 26, 2018, the company introduced 19lt, 1.5lt and five-litre plastic bottles in addition to the regular half-litre product. The smaller sized bottles are squeezable in a bid to make recycling and collection easy.
Avante, a Portuguese word meaning "forward", is produced from a 206-metre deep well encased in a basalt aquifer located on a 67,000Sqm plot in Chacha, Angolela Tara wereda, some 110Km north of Addis Abeba.
“Chacha is a pollution free area and is located within close proximity of Addis Abeba, making it preferable for investment,” said Elias Gebremariam, factory manager.
The production capacity of the plant is an aggregate 30,000lt of water an hour for all bottle sizes. The plant has three fully automated production lines, which carry out plastic bottle forming, filling and packaging.
“The production lines are entirely free from human contact,” said Bulent Durmaz, general manager of GGB, a subsidiary of Garipoglu Corporate Group in Turkey, which has been engaged in food, beverage and home supplies manufacturing since 1970.
Employing 78 people and importing caps from Turkey, the company is planning to open a recycling plant as well as begin manufacturing cosmetics and alcoholic beverages, according to Bulent.
GGB is not the only food and beverage producer in Chacha Wereda. Alpha Mineral Water has been in production for the past two years, while Komari Liquor, owned by European investors, has already secured land from the wereda's land management office to construct a beverage processing and packaging plant. Wub Water and Habesha and Dashen beers are as well bottled in Debre Birhan.
The majority of Ethiopia’s water bottle producers are nonetheless located in Oromia Regional State. An aggregate of five billion bottles of water is produced annually.
Eyasu Elias (PhD), assistant professor and researcher at Addis Abeba University’s School of Environmental Science with more than a decade of experience, commented that squeezable plastic bottles simplify disposal. But he does not believe it will do much to improve environmental quality.
"The critical issue of pollution in urban cities is polyethene [the most common type of plastic] material, which is not degradable for centuries," he said. "Change will only be possible by shifting to biodegradable materials."
PUBLISHED ON
Apr 08,2019 [ VOL
19 , NO
989]
Featured | Apr 26,2019
Fortune News | Sep 24,2018
Fortune News | Dec 07,2019
Agenda | Apr 17,2020
Radar | Nov 30,2019
Fortune News | Jul 20,2019
Fortune News | Dec 29,2018
Radar | Jun 20,2020
Fortune News | Feb 15,2020
August 8 , 2020 . By MAYA MISIKIR
On any day, the waiting hall of Black Lion Hospital is not a sight for the faint-hearted. Patients seeking treatment find themselves maroone...
August 8 , 2020 . By MAYA MISIKIR
Shemsu Hussien was transported in an ambulance from his hometown in Worabe, Silte Zone to Addis Abeba whi...
August 8 , 2020
A familiar sight these days is high government officials - the very important people - hunched over muddy...
August 8 , 2020 . By Atsebaha Abay
There are currently a number of initiatives that are mobilising large sums of money to address different...
August 8 , 2020
A familiar sight these days is high government officials - the very important people...
August 1 , 2020
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed (PhD) had an audience with leaders of the opposition bloc ...
July 25 , 2020
The economic indicators for Ethiopia this fiscal year are less than encouraging, even...
July 18 , 2020
In the past two years, it was perhaps the events of the first week of this month that...
