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Feature: Chinese investor "tests the water" in Angola's beer market

Xinhua, September 18, 2015 Adjust font size:

"This is an 100 percent Angolan beer brand," Buhe Bater said, pointing to a long queue of bottles of beer on a production line waiting to be packed in boxes.

Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos named the new comer in the country's beer market "Bela," meaning "beauty" in local language, during a tour of the plant earlier this year, said Bater, director general of the Luanda Brewery Limited.

The plant, with an investment of 180 million U.S. dollars from the Hong Kong-based China International Fund (CIF), started production in October 2014.

"The plant has a full annual production capacity of 100,000 kiloliters. With its fine quality and lower price, Bela sells very well in Angola," Bater said, adding that introduced into market in March 2015, Bela makes a hit in shopping malls, hotels and restaurants in the capital city of Luanda and other provinces of Angola in recent months.

"We have established sale networks in all the 18 provinces of Angola," said Bater.

CIF, known in Angola for its major business as infrastructure construction, ventures into the manufacture sector in line with Angola's aspiration of diversifying its oil-dependent economy.

Santos said on many occasions that Angola welcomed foreign investment and advanced technologies to kick off the industrialization process, diversify the oil-dependent national economy, and to reduce the unemployment rate in the country which hovered at over 20 percent.

The plant, one of the largest enterprises in Angola, employed over 150 Angolans to work side by side with Chinese technicians.

"The Angolan workers are on the right track and most of them were now skilled and qualified staff in the plant with the help and training from their Chinese counterpart," Bater said.

According to the director, if the sales momentum continued, the plant would start its full production very soon.

"The company also plans to build a purified water plant and a fruit juice plant beside the beer plant, offering more made-in-Angolas and jobs," Bater said. Endit