It was in 1999 that the first bottled water, Highland Springs, was introduced to Ethiopia, by the Appex Bottling Company – a pioneer in the industry established by Ermias Amelga and partners. Now, there are 32 water bottling companies, producing either mineral or spring water, in all corners of the country.
Investors into the sector claim that there is a huge demand in the market for bottled water, which is what led to the emergence of so many brands.
Blu Spring Water, one of the new entrants to the market, is bottled by Almaz Eshetie Mineral Water Plc, which was established in June 2014, with a capital of 42 million Br.
The Company started its operations in September, with a production capacity of 5,000 litres an hour, said Getachew Baheru, marketing manager of the Company. The Company will soon double its production with new machinery ordered from China, to be installed at its plant at Holeta town in the West Shoa zone, he says. The certification has allowed the company to supply 15,000 packs of water to a University recently, he says.
Blu water is now starting to show on bottled waters’ shelves of some mini markets and groceries.
Mubarek Alemu is a bar tender working for Dass Grocery, on Sierra Leona Street, where they have a number of brands including Yes, Aquaddis and Blu water.
“Our customers choose one out of three, not because they are aware that the water is certified, but because they know the brands well, let alone that I’m not even aware about these issue,” says Mubarek.
Another company in the sector is Agmas Spring Water, by Agmas Manufacturing Plc, located in Addis Abeba, around Ayer Tena. It already started its production two weeks ago and distributes its water in 0.6lt and 1.2lt bottles to 20 major towns outside Addis Abeba, which they avoided for competition reasons, says Tesfaye Temesgen, the Company’s manager.
His company has already started the process of quality assurance with the Ethiopian Conformity Assessment Enterprise (ECAE).
There are different quality standards that have to be taken into consideration before the actual production begins, as well as for product specification.
In this regard, the Ethiopian Standards Agency (ESA) – the national standards body responsible for the development and publication of Ethiopian standards – set a compulsory standard for bottled drinking water in 2013.
The usual trend is for each company to obtain a certificate from the Food, Medicine & Health Care Administration & Control Authority (FMHACA) before they start production. The requirements for the certificate mainly focus on production inputs, such as infrastructural components, human resources, technological inputs and the production environment. This means that the FMHACA is not involved in product specification and the mineral composition or content of the products, says Mesafint Abeje, and inspection director at the FMAHCA.
Then, these factories begin operations and start to deliver their products. This was the previous experience. But now bottled water has made it on to the list of 57 products at the Ministry of Trade (MoT) that require compulsory standards, with the companies having to pass an inspection by the ECAE.
Cotton fibre and cotton yarn, fertilisers, coffee, alcoholic beverages, oil seeds, iron and steel products, matches, construction materials, edible salt and food additives are among the other products on the list.
The enterprise was established as a conformity assessment body under proclamation number 196/2010, with the mandate to provide inspection, laboratory testing and certification services to the public and to industry.
The MoT and ECAE announced in August a six-month grace period for quality certification by bottlers, by which time six companies had already been certified.
These were Great Abyssinia Plc, the bottler of Abyssinia Spring Water; Asku Plc, bottler of Aquaddis Spring Water; Yes Brands Food & Beverage Plc, bottler of Yes Spring Water; Herbal Trade & Industry Plc, bottler of SPA Water; Eden Business S.C, bottler of Eden Water and Origin Food & Beverage Factory, the bottler of Origin Water. Since the announcement, four more have been certified – Aquasafe Spring Water; Almaz Eshetie Mineral Water Plc, the bottler of Blu Water; East Africa Bottling, the bottler of Dasani Water, and Cheers Spring Water.
Among the early ones to be certified is Aqauaddis Spring Water. The Area Sales Manager of the Company, Getachew Meshesha, told Fortune that “because we certified early there is a chance that we are able to sell our product to a big organizations both governmental and non governmental.”
“But when we come to the ground still there is lack of awareness on ordinary customers about which one is certified and which one is not and it is still early to determine the market share and production impacts of the quality certificate issued by ECAE on our product and the fact that at the moment our production is slow down by power interruption so we could not able to see the real impact,” says Getachew.
Mohamed Abrar is a supervisor at Abader Supermarket, around Arat Kilo, on King George Sixth Street. At the super market they have Yes, Aquaaddis, Aquasafe, and Eden spring water. The supermarket and its customers were not aware of the standards set by ECAE, he said. the preferred for their customers, he said, was Yes, of which they sell 100 packs a day on average.
Yes, as well as Abyssinia and Aquaaddis, were also among the preferred brands at another small store around Bekelo Bet, on Sierra Leona Street. The price variation of Yes Spring water ranged from Seven birr to 13 Br, Aquaaddis and Abyssinia from Six birr to 12 Br, for 0.5 litres, one litre and two litres respectively. Customers are not aware of the quality standard set by the Enterprise, says Abdi Sefa, the store owner, and mostly their preferences are with Yes.
Hana Meberatu is one of the daily of consumer of bottled water; Fortune met her while she was buying water from a small shop.
“I do usually use bottled water for my daily consumption and, I choose Yes water as my first preference but if I could not get Yes, I choose any of the water that I get and I do not usually see their label or expire date,” she said.
Most of the time I choose one from other rarely based on there taste which is I do not prefer water that have hard taste.”
“Each company has to fulfil all the requirements in the bottled drinking water specification document,” said Tekea Berhane, corporate communication & service head at the ECAE. “In cases where the product or the production process is found not to be in compliance with the standards, the producers are given time to rectify the gap within a specified time limit.”
According to the document, there are 44 parameters used to test the mineral content of the product, such as the odour and taste, colour and other mineral compositions. In addition, the labelling, storage, transportation and storage of the final product has to be in accordance with the standard.
For example, each final product has to declare the net contents, location and name of the source, name and physical address of the exploiter and trade name. Again, the composition of the product has to be declared in advertising and on the labels.
The enterprise has the technological capacity to test only 80pc of the parameters it set, with the resources it has at its disposal and the remaining is outsourced overseas.
Starting from the sampling of the product to the finial result, the quality assurance process takes 17 days – three to four days for completing the 80pc of the test done in Ethiopia and the remaining days for the products to be tested abroad and be returned.
“But this does not mean that it will take 17 days for a single product test; this will depend on how many bottlers apply to the enterprise for their product to be tested. If one company came and applied, it will take the same 17 days. On other hand, if four or five bottlers applied it will still take 17 days,” said Tesfaye Solomon, branch coordinator and customer services head at the ECAE. “So, we prefer the producers to come together in bigger numbers at once, rather than only one company to have their products tested.” He declined to say which tests were carried out in other countries.
Each bottler company pays approximately around 77,000 Br to get the service, 80pc of which will be used for the out sourced testing that will take place outside Ethiopia, where as the remaining is used for the local inspection, according to Takea.
For the time being, only bottlers in and around Addis Abeba, including Debre Berhan and Oromia, have been licensed. Ten bottlers are in the process now.
But Tesfaye expresses his fear that, based on the current trend and given the fact that the remaining 22 bottlers are not yet certified, a few bottlers may not meet the deadline.
“There is no change on the time deadline and the ministry as a regulatory body will take the measures on these companies that fail to comply with the deadline,” said Abbdurahim Sied, public relations and communication affairs vice head at the MOT.
Leave a Reply