Top water bottling company plans to improve its production by 133%. The company entered the market recently and it is investing Birr 40 million to achieve its plan. The company’s bottling capacity will increase to 42,000 liters of water per hour from its current production capacity of 18,000 liters of water when it plants a water purification and bottling machine which is expected to arrive within two months from China.

The company started operating two months ago with 143 employees in Tatek Geffersa Nono Wereda of Burayu town, 18Km north of Addis. The company’s owner Abebe Dinku Water & Non-Alcoholic Beverages Factory invested Birr 273 million to plant the company. According to the company’s Marketing Manager, Ato Shimeles Ajema, the water bottling company will employ 40 additional workers when the new machine arrives.

The Marketing Manager said, “Ethiopia’s water bottling business is untapped and could be exploited.”The country’s annual water consumption is 72 billion liters. However, only 3.5 billion liters of water is bottled yearly by 70 water bottling companies. Ato Shimels said, “This means the current water bottling companies cater only to five percent of the total consumption. Kenya, which has less than half the size of Ethiopia’s population, has 600 bottling companies that provide 37.7% of the country’s consumption.”

The company also said it will start recycling plastic water bottles in two weeks time and that a machine, that grinds them into microplastic, is installed. The microplastic will be exported to China.

Ten youth associations, who will gather used bottles and deliver them to the plant, are recruited by the company which said it would pay 4.5 Birr for a kilogram of used bottles and five Birr for its own used plastic bottles.

Source: Addis Fortune