ETHIOPIA – Adad Trading Plc, a local livestock export company has joined the competitive water bottling industry in Ethiopia with an investment of 60 million Br (US$1.75m) and partial financing of 70% of the investment by the Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE) through lease financing.
From the 60 million Br (US$1.75m) the company imported the bottling machinery from China for 33 million Br (US$963,500) and invested 27 million Br (US$788,000) in the civil work of the construction.
The company bottling Setit Purified Spring Water is built on 10, 000Sqm of land and operates with 59 permanent and 11 contract employees having the production capacity of 18,000lt of water an hour, reports Addis Fortune.
It distributes the water in half-litre, one-litre, two-litre and 20-litre bottles.
Setit joins the 97 other bottlers operating in the country having been certified by the Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise.
The company is embarking on granting franchises to organised youth groups as its marketing strategy while also reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.
According to Kibrom Mulugeta, CEO of the company, it is working with municipal governments to organise unemployed youth to receive loans in exchange for distributing its products which they have already co-organised 57 youth in Meqelle and 20 in Humera.
The Ethiopian water bottling market has been seeing an increase in the number of companies operating in it with others penetrating the international markets through exports.
Abebe Dinku Water & Non-Alcoholic Beverages, Ethiopian bottler of Top Water brand, recently penned a 20-year deal with a Saudi Arabian company, Al Naba Jeldi Water Company to export the bottled water brand.
Earlier in the year, Garanba Bottling, a subsidiary of B&C Aluminum Plc that bottles South Spring Water in Ethiopia, also closed a deal with a UK-based company to export US$1m worth of bottled water to England.
According to Market Data Forecast, Middle East and Africa bottled water market size was worth US$12.01 billion in 2018 and is estimated to be growing at a CAGR of 8.7% to reach US$16.85 billion by 2023.
Globally the market is expected to reach US$267.77 billion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 9.4% from 2018 to 2026.
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