The company announced it's agreement with partners to build glass-bottle manufacturing plants to take advantage of the growing demand for packaged consumer goods and bottled drinks in the two countries where a quarter of Africans live- Nigeria and Ethiopia. The company identified a site with access to natural gas and water, with a feasibility study underway said the Chief Executive officer Andre De Ruyter in an interview in Johannesburg last week.
“Beverage cans are a fairly new innovation,” in most of Africa, the CEO said. “Previously it was all returnable glass bottles, which were in some instances recycled up to 30 times. So you have this old, scuffed bottle and the new, shiny fresh can with a logo.”Consumer-goods companies such as U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc and brewer SABMiller Plc are expanding in Africa to take advantage of economic growth and rising household incomes.
“There’s a youth bulge of people reaching drinking age” in Africa, De Ruyter said. Producing glass bottles and cans “makes a lot of sense.”
Nigeria, with a population of about 177 million, has 44 percent of its population under the age of 15 while 46 percent of Ethiopia’s 97 million people are below that age, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. That compares with 16 percent of the 403 million people who live in the euro area.
He explained that their growth strategy was mainly focused on African market with a third line planned for Angola.
No comments:
Post a Comment