Delta in recycling initiative

Business
Delta Corporation has partnered small-scale players to collect discarded empty plastic beer bottles for recycling across the country as it moves to curb littering.

Delta Corporation has partnered small-scale players to collect discarded empty plastic beer bottles for recycling across the country as it moves to curb littering.

BY BUSINESS REPORTER

The move to collect the discarded Chibuku Super beer containers comes as the company plans to increase its market share with Chibuku Super. Delta has set up new plants in Masvingo and Kwekwe.

Chibuku Super’s $14 million Masvingo plant is set to be opened in October while another $14,5 million plant is nearing completion in Kwekwe.

Already other plants in Chitungwiza and Fairbridge in Bulawayo have put the company on a more competitive position with the Chibuku Super product.

Company secretary Alex Makamure told Standardbusiness in Masvingo last week that their volumes were set to increase hence there was need to be environmentally friendly.

“Our market share for Chibuku has always been about 80-85% but the reality is that in the advent of Chibuku Super, the other players have not been able to cope with the technology and invest the way we have done so we are actually seeing a bit of an increase,” he said.

“We should be able to gain some bit of market share in some of the areas.”

On keeping a clean environment Makamure said: “One of the key imperatives is a clean world, where we seek to create value out of waste and strive for a cleaner world.

“We, therefore, work with suppliers, distributor, retailers, municipalities and consumers in order to reduce all forms of waste across our value chain and facilitate reuse and recycle waste and packaging.”

Delta has so far established 182 beverage waste collection centres across the country where cans, PET and glass are collected separately for recycling.

The company assists its partners; some of them community based organisations, and gives them the machinery to crush the PET to enable easy transportation and recycling.

Makamure said the beverages manufacturer was also working with local authorities to increase their capacity to manage litter.

He said they were managing the whole process of having the PET taken to Harare.

Brian Karemba, Delta’s manufacturing executive said their volumes were set to increase hence the need to find ways to manage litter.

“We have gone higher in terms of the volume that we are putting up and therefore [we are] more efficient because we are using less than we were while producing smaller volumes,” he said.

“There is also the technology side of it which ensures that our system is more synchronised and more efficient rather than the manual system we used to have.”