New water bottling company in Ethiopia joins the burgeoning Industry

ETHIOPIA – Kefeta Spring Water, anew water bottling company in Ethiopia has joined the competitive industry withan investment of 62 million Br (US$1.9m) and partial financing from TheDevelopment Bank of Ethiopia (DBE).Despite the recentmushrooming of...

ETHIOPIA – Kefeta Spring Water, a new water bottling company in Ethiopia has joined the competitive industry with an investment of 62 million Br (US$1.9m) and partial financing from The Development Bank of Ethiopia (DBE).

Despite the recent mushrooming of water bottling companies in the country, all 97 present bottlers produce only 3.7 billion litres of water a year, satisfying five percent of the water demand.

The new plant located at the Amhara Regional State has a production line of five sizes of bottled waters ranging from 330ml to two litres and can bottle 18,000 of the smallest size bottles per hour.

It rests on 1,800Sqm piece of land and serviced by a 210m deep well.

Construction of the plant was undertaken by Fereja Dawud General Contractor and Haile Consultancy Architects & Engineering Plc.

The company imported automated ASG and Tecklong machinery, from Chenyu Packing Machinery, China which were installed by HPC Chemical & Consulting.

Last year December 19, 2019, Kefeta Spring Water secured a conformity certificate from the Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise and had a soft launch in the same month.

The company started operations with 42 employees and plans to increase this to 72, according to Yesuf Endris, deputy general manager of Kefeta, which also plans to introduce a juice bottling plant after a year.

Along with the juice processing plant, the owners aspire to start production of IV glucose.

Currently, they are preparing a proposal for the local investment commission to secure an investment license. The proposal includes a cost analysis and the production capacity of the plant.

According to Yesuf, they are awaiting approval from the Amhara Regional Health Bureau on the feasibility of the area to open the IV glucose production plant.

The company has received 8,000Sqm of land for the construction of the IV glucose plant.

After getting a green light from the investment commission, the owners plan to import the machinery worth 60 million Br (US$1.8m) from Italy, reports Addis Fortune.



Orginal Source : www.foodbusinessafrica.com

[Author:thasneem]