Varun Beverages Zimbabwe says it is looking at launching juice-based beverages from its portfolio to augment the company’s market share and product offering.
BY BUSINESS REPORTER
Varun Beverages Zimbabwe (Pvt) Ltd director and Africa chief executive Krishnan Shankar, who is overseeing the Zimbabwe operation, said the construction of the Pepsi $30 million bottling plant was now in full swing.
Last year, Varun Beverages, a unit of Ravi Jaipuria’s RJ Group, partnered with a local company Glaciem (Pvt) Limited to set up a $30 million Pepsi bottling plant.
Shankar said his company was on course to meet its production target of early second quarter 2017.
He said although the priority for the group was to launch its Pepsi brands, they were also looking at launching juice-based beverages from PepsiCo’s portfolio to augment the company’s market share and product offering.
“We would possibly look at juice-based beverages in future. The decision to look at other sectors would be a factor of what our board decides as we move forward,” Shankar said.
The group, he said, was bullish about the Zimbabwe market and feels this was the right time to enter the country.
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“Zimbabwe has huge potential for the beverage market and that is the reason we have decided to invest in this country. Yes there are challenges to date, but we are confident these are short-term,” he said.
“To give you a different perspective, when we entered the Zambian market, it had been stagnant for years. After our entry in late 2010, the industry started to grow and today it has doubled in volumes,” he said.
“We expect similar results in Zimbabwe.”
