São Paulo – Coca-Cola and Palestine’s National Beverage Company (NBC) opened this Wednesday (30) a new bottling facility in Gaza, Palestine. The investment was USD 20 million, according to information by Jordan news agency Petra.
With the new plant, the first one in the Gaza Strip, NBC now has four bottling facilities and four distribution centers in Palestine. According to Petra, the new facilities will create 120 direct jobs, a number that should go up to 270 in the next three years, since there are expansion plans for the near future. This will drive up the company’s total number of employees in the West Bank and Gaza to 750.
According to the news outlet, the Coca-Cola Foundation, NBC and Mercy Corps, a humanitarian organization based in the United States, announced also a USD 1.3 million initiative to improve access of the local population to drinking water and to create job opportunities for the Palestinian youth. The project’s goal is to provide support to over 30,000 Palestinians in the next three years, including the building of a water desalination plant near the Al Maghazi refugee camp in the center of Gaza that will supply 24,000 refugees.
“National Beverage Company and Coca-Cola share great pride in having been part of the fabric of Palestinian communities for almost 18 years, and our new Gaza plant shows our ongoing commitment to investing and supporting progress in communities around the world,” said Coca-Cola’s president and CEO, Muhtar Kent, according to Petra.
“Ever since NBC first began operations, we have been firmly committed to building a successful Palestinian business that can create employment opportunities, support the national economy and demonstrate the great capabilities of our region while serving products of the very highest quality,” added the chairman and founder of NBC, Zahi Kouri.
The Gaza plant has the capacity to fill up to 36,000 glass bottles per hour. It has 15,000 square meters in area and has 18 trucks for distribution.
*Translated by Sérgio Kakitani
