One Water bottler to triple capacity with two new plastic bottles and caps plants

ETHIOPIA – Mogle Bottled Water Manufacturing, Ethiopia’s bottler of One Water brand plans to triple its production capacity and unveil two facilities for the manufacture of plastic bottles and caps.

An Addis Fortune report indicates that the expansion will enable the company bottle 96,000 bottles of water an hour, up from the current 32,000 bottles.

The new facilities, installed with three pieces of machinery imported from Chinese company Tech-Long packaging will enable the company manufacture 18,000 plastic bottles and 20,000 caps an hour.

Mogle has also invested in erecting the building and warehouses and procured 20 vehicles to distribute the water.

The expansion will employ 140 temporary and 261 contract employees to add to 414 permanent and 161 contract employees at the company.

The company which trades under Abahawa Trading, started production in 2015, with 18,000 bottles but made its first expansion last year.

“The investment aims at saving forex incurred from importing materials,” said Eniyew Zeleke, CEO of the company.

“We will be fully operational with the new set of machinery next January.”

The company is also planning to introduce bottled water with 0.3ml, 0.4ml and 20L sizes.

Ethiopia has 70 water bottling companies producing 3.5 billion litres of water a year, against the nation’s total water consumption that stands at 72 billion litres.

The water bottlers provide only 5% of total consumption, while neighbouring Kenya has 600 bottling companies that provide 37.7pc of the country’s consumption.

To address the issue of plastic pollution, Eniyew said the company uses oriented polypropylene (OPP), a decomposable plastic material, to produce the bottle.

“The expansion of local investments should gain incentives,” said Negussie Semmie (PhD), a university lecturer at Addis Abeba University with over one and a half decades of experience in water development and economics.

“Beside individual efforts to sustain the water resource, the government has to take the initiative to develop a sustainable watershed,” Negussie said.