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| Business |
| Sobo unveils PET bottles, Splash! |
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by
Aubrey Mchulu, 03 February 2004
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16:17:08
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Southern Bottlers Limited (Sobo), local franchise holder for the Coca Cola Company, has launched a new flavoured drink branded Splash! and trendy PET packaging for Coca Cola, Fanta and Sprite in 500 millilitre (ml) bottles targeted at the up-market consumers.
Coca Cola marketing manager Elias Imaan said at the launch in Blantyre that the polyethyleneterophthate (PET) packaging for Coke, Fanta and Sprite is his company’s response to demands by consumers who are becoming more sophisticated and demanding modern and trendy packaging.
Consumers will be paying K30 per 500 ml bottle of Splash! which is coming in three different flavours of orange, raspberry and cream soda while a K500 ml bottle of Fanta, Sprite and Coke in PET bottles is costing K45 each.
“The new packaging is convenient, user friendly to the traveller because it has a screw on cap and there is no spilling,” Imaan told an audience comprising the company’s business associates and the media.
He said Splash! is targeted at key accounts and third party distribution network through supermarkets in Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu and informal markets while PET-bottled Coke, Fanta and Sprite will be sold in supermarkets, petroleum service stations, fast food shops and transit outlets in major towns.
Responding to a question on the sustainability of the new PET bottles after similar packaging was launched before vanishing from shelves a couple of years ago, Imaan said Sobo will sustain production because the products are now locally produced.
“We will sustain the products because now we are producing the PET bottles at our own plant in Lilongwe, filling them and labelling them ourselves,” he said, adding that 300 ml glass bottles for Fanta, Coke and Sprite will stay as they make up 90 percent of Sobo’s soft drinks market.
He said the plastic-packaged Coke products launched a couple of years ago could not be sustained due to logistical hiccups because the products were being produced in Zimbabwe and Zambia.
Speaking at the launch of the PET packaging, Coca Cola Central Africa Director Lionel Marumahoko said the launch symbolises his company’s commitment and dedication to meeting consumer expectations and to improving the quality of customers’ lives.
“Consumers now have the opportunity to enjoy their favourite brands in a more convenient, lightweight and unbreakable packaging with a re-sealable and temper-proof plastic closure,” he said.
Coke and Sprite have a six-week shelf life while Splash! and Fanta, which is in orange and pineapple, have an eight-week shelf life.
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