SA Firm, Nampak, to set up Glass-Bottle Plants in Nigeria
South Africa’s Nampak Ltd. has agreed with partners to build glass-bottle manufacturing plants in Nigeria and Ethiopia to take advantage of growing demand for packaged consumer goods and bottled drinks in Africa’s most populous nations.
The Johannesburg-based company has reached a preliminary agreement with a partner for a factory in Ethiopia and is now seeking financing for a project with a potential cost of $68 million, Chief Executive Officer Andre de Ruyter said. That will help supply drinks makers including brewer Heineken NV and soft drinks producerCoca-Cola Inc, he said. Nampak has also “made good progress” on a Nigerian factory, the CEO said.
Nigeria, with a population of about 177 million, has 44% of its population under the age of 15 while 46% 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.
Nampak is expanding outside of South Africa to help reverse declining profit margins in its home market, where it’s cutting costs. The continent’s most-industrialized economy contracted in the second quarter of 2015 for the first time in a year, while consumer confidence dropped to a 14-year low in the same period.