CAMEROON – Cameroonian beverage giant, Société Anonyme des Brasseries du Cameroun (SABC), is seeking to invest an estimated of XAF5 billion (US$8.8m) to renovate its furnace n°1 and acquire a third PET preform line for its glass factory Socaver (Société camerounaise de verrerie).
According to the subsidiary of French company Castel and Netherlands based brewer Heineken, the investment aims to boost Socaver’s production capacity.
As per SABC’s estimates, the furnace n° 1 should become operational by late 2023 while the third PET preform line will start operations by April 2022.
Without revealing details about the additional production volume to be gained by Socaver thanks to the investments, SABC stresses that the projects are aimed to meet its commercial partners’ ever-growing demand, which is now up by 15,000 tons.
Other than manufacturing its wider range of beverages which include beers, soft drinks, water, energy drinks and alcohol mixer, the company bottles and distributes Coca-Cola’s and Nicholas International’s products in the country.
In 2019, Socaver had invested XAF6 billion (US$10.6m) to boost its production capacity from 32,500 to 38,500 tons of glass yearly.
At the same time, it installed two PET preform lines with a production capacity of 300 million preforms yearly.
Further boosting its capacity, SABC recently contracted German and French operators Krones and Side, to renovate one of its soft drink production lines at a cost of XAF2 billion (US$3.5m).
With the investment, the renovated soft drink production line has become a mixed line able to produce 15,000 hectolitres of bottled products weekly.
“We can therefore conclude that the objective of optimizing the production capacity of the plant in Yaoundé and making it more autonomous and more efficient has been achieved,” the SABC comments.
Meanwhile, the beverage maker has diversified its operations by venturing into poultry farming, in a bid to boost growth of the country’s agriculture sector.
Its newly established subsidiary, the Cameroonian Farming Company (CFC), feature a parent poultry farm which will produce 112,500 hatching eggs/week and a hatchery capable of producing 90,000 one day old chicks per week.
The CFC established at an investment of XAF 18 billion (US$31.9m) also encompasses a specialized corn grits production unit.
SABC intends to produce 30,000 tons of corn grits yearly for beer production with some 60,000 tons of the raw material purchased from local farmers and 10,000 tons of grits sourced from Maïscam, an agro-industrial units in the northern part of Cameroon.
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