ETHIOPIA – Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Ethiopia, has bagged the NOSCAR safety award, recognizing its excellence in occupational health, safety, and environment management at its Bahir Dar Plant.
The NOSCAR award is given to factories that sustained and showcased the highest adherence to occupation safety and health (OSH) risk management.
“This achievement is the testament to our commitment to upholding the highest safety standards in our plants,” said Duncan Kimani, manufacturing Director of CCBA-Ethiopia.
To earn this award, companies are expected to score more than 95% on the verification audit carried out by NOSA, and less than 0.8% in Disabling Injury and Illness Frequency Rate, and 0% in Environmental Incidents.
NOAS is South Africa’s leading occupational health, safety and environmental training provider, offering more than 100 safety-related training courses, skills programmes and qualifications which hold various local and international accreditations.
“The Bahirdar Plant showed a wider and collective endeavor to protect, preserve and save a life every day,” stated the beverage company on a LinkedIn post.
Other than ensuring a safe working environment for its workers, Coca-Cola Beverages Africa Ethiopia, has also been pumping investments into its operations to boost local production.
The subsidiary of Coca-Cola Beverages Africa opened a new US$100 million bottling plant at Sebeta in Ethiopia mid this year.
The new plant will enable the company to integrate the production of inputs such as preforms, closures and other materials.
Production of these input materials, besides meeting CCBA’s own demand, is planned for the export market to generate foreign exchange and supply the local market to help resolve shortages in the sector.
Its completion brings CCBA’s production capacity in Ethiopia to more than 100 million cases a year and as well as enable local production of new products such as Minute Maid Juice, reducing imports and adding to national GDP.
Coca-Cola unveils new look Sprite Clear in Zambia
In other related news, Coca-Cola Central Beverages Zambia (CCBZ), has unveiled a new iconic look of its leading sparkling lemon-lime flavoured soft drink Sprite in a clear polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottle packaging.
This shift from its iconic green bottle means more Sprite bottles can be collected, recycled and reused to make new items, a move that is part of Coca-Cola’s World Without Waste vision.
The initiative targets to collect and recycle the equivalent of every bottle or can it sell and use 50% recycled content in all its packaging by 2030.
“People in Zambia can enjoy the same great taste of their favourite sparkling lemon-lime drink knowing their bottle can be easily recycled and made into new items.
“The shift from the green bottle to clear PET is a significant step in driving our sustainability agenda which is a key element of our business.
“This move also allows us to work with partners in the recycling industry and with waste collectors and aggregators to achieve more value for our recyclable plastics,” CCBZ general manager, Hebert Nuwamanya said.
Clear PET can be made into a wide range of new products, such as pillow and duvet inners, as well as into new bottles, making it more valuable than green PET, which has limited uses.
Since its launch 60 years ago, Sprite has been known for its iconic green bottle and this marks a major milestone in its growth and sustainability in various markets.
Zambia joins other African markets that include South Africa, Nigeria Ethiopia and Kenya to introduce the Sprite clear PET.
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