Avante water offers bottles with half the plastic

Turkish General Group Beverages (GGB) launched an investment of 180 million birr in Ethiopia for its new water bottling plant around Chahca Town, 110km from Addis Ababa, near Debre Berhan. The new water, Named Avante, joins the competitive mineral water market. They say there are two distinctions that add value to their water, according to the General Manager of the GGB Bulent Durmaz. The packaging bottle is thicker and uses 50 percent less plastic than the average bottle in Ethiopia. The thickness meets European standards and the company offers different liter options, including the 19-liter non-refillable use and throw bottle.
They employ about 78 permanent employees. The factory produces 30,000 liters of water per hour and sits on 4,700sqm of land.
“We will collect, recycle and export the plastic bottles but we also want to minimize the plastic we are discharging in the first place,” he said. “The recycling business is not a profitable one but it will solve the critical foreign exchange problem for us to import new packaging and also we will substitute imports for the country.”
The Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) level is said to be according to the WHO standard, more than 100m is also another unique feature that the company is providing. The water is high in basalt from a spring surrounding Chacha. The company doesn’t add or take out any minerals or any minerals out of the natural spring.
The group stated that no loans were taken for the investment and they believe the Ethiopian market is attractive. The General Manager also says they will re-invest the money they generate afterward in other companies, like beer, spirits, and wine.