Expertise in bottles
Particularly noteworthy is the support provided by the KHS experts in the company’s Bottles & Shapes program who contribute their expertise in the development and optimization of bottles. Their consultancy service produces PET bottles which have been optimized in terms of both ecology and economy and boast 100% line suitability and compliance with the customer’s design concepts.
Although the line was officially commissioned in May 2019 by the president of Uganda, represented by the minister of trade, industry and cooperatives, production has been running since the beginning of the year – and very smoothly at that. The performance figures of the new system have even exceeded CCBA’s high expectations. “We’re achieving a line efficiency of 98%,” says Conrad van Niekerk happily, managing director of CCBA Uganda. “And Rwenzori’s water bottling line operates around the clock, seven days a week. The performance figures of this line and those from Mbarara are the best in the entire group.” Even though the expanded capacity is already reaching its limits, the key factor in CCBA’s output is the availability of water which is a limited and therefore precious resource in Uganda.
In addition to efficiency, the subject of sustainability is becoming increasingly important not only for beverage producers in Uganda but for the rest of Africa as well. CCBA can score here, too: under the motto of ‘a world without waste’ CCBA wants to help ensure that by 2030 100% of all PET bottles sold are collected and recycled. Plastic Recycling Industries, a recycling initiative owned by CCBA and founded specifically for this purpose, buys collected PET bottles from consumers and then reintroduces them to the recovered materials cycle. If many more companies follow this example and are thus able to stem climate change, the glaciers of the Rwenzori Mountains will retain their beauty for a long time to come.
