. Nairumour that after an absence of many years, Pepsi will re-enter the Kenyan market in the near future to resume battle with Coca Cola, possibly through their South African partners. If so, it will cap a great year for investment to the country, and that despite 2008 being a relatively tough year for investors and companies, with the post-election violence, business disruption, high fuel and energy prices, depressed consumer spending, P & P madness (pirates and politicians) collapsing stockbrokers, there was a steady flow of new investments and new products that happened this year. Re-cap of some notable ones
Banking
- Takeovers concluded - Ecobank take over of EABS, and Stanbic merger with CFC (now CFCStanbic)
- UBA licensed (2009)
- Gulf African and First Community (Shariah banking kicks off)
Beverages
- Summit Lager a new beer from Keroche Industries
- East African Breweries launched Alvaro (malted soft drink)
- Coca Cola launched Novidia (another malted soft drink) and also started selling Minute maid
- KETEPA launched Safari Iced Tea
Communications
- WPP buys into Scangroup
- 2008 saw the launch of two new mobile operators - Orange (France Telkom) and Yu (Essar/Econet) to battle Safaricom and a re-energized Zain
- Altech buys into KDN
- A long-running fight over one(EASSY)submarine cable, gave birth to three different ones being laid to Mombasa
- Wananchi launched Zuku (TV, Broadband, Phone)
Transport, Energy & Manufacturing
- Tiger brands buying into Haco
- An investment in the Kenya Oil Refinery at Mombasa was still under battle between Libyan and Indian Investors
- Jinchuan (China) to bail out Tiomin?
- Mirambo and PD Toll to salvage the Rift Valley Railways
- Delta Airlines (USA - but postponed to 2009)
- Air Arabia started flights to Kenya
Tourism
- Libyans took over the Grand (Laico) Regency
- The Tribe opens.
Exits
- Chevron (Caltex) sold out – bought by Total
- Unilever (de-listing from the NSE)
- Roy Puffet from rift Valley Railways
9 comments:
are there any other business idea's in Kenya that do not involve selling liquid drinks? Can you say saturation?
What's the next thing they're going to make? peanut juice?
kenyanentrepreneur.com
KE: there are many more deals and investments in energy, housing, banking, manufacturing - mostly private, that were done this year.
..and ICT, Education & Research in 2009. Watch this space!
I welcome competition in the Beverage industry and Telkom, unfortunately Internet is still having toothing problems with Zuku and Access@home having customer satisfaction issues. Safaricom 3G is apparently good but it is too expensive for the average user
You left out one big one in beverages: The merger of Brookside and Spin Knit Dairy (who, you will recall, had a consignment of perfectly fine milk powder destroyed by KRA). There is even talk Brookside will take over the Delamere outfit.
mountkirima: The battle for mobiles has gone beyond (cheap) voice now - next is data, money transfer. can they all afford to engage in a price war there?
Propaganda: Thanks I forgot about (1) Brookside/S.Knit and (2) the addition in 2008 of my favoutire new channel - CNBC Africa (it was on Dish before, now its on free TV).
- Was spin knit powder cargo legit? for some consumers, the company has never out-lived their bad image of a few years ago
The Spin Knit cargo was in transit, and even cleared by KRA for re-export to New Zealand before part of it was burnt in a kanjo-style attack. It wasn't contaminated or anything.
BTW, Pepsi opened a regional office in Nairobi in 1992 at Lonrho House, sparking rumours of an entry into the market.
Well Well Well, Pepsi is already in Kenya. How is that. Please walk to the soda and stand in a supermarket or a pub and there is a recent addition called Novida look at it closely. what does the bottle read Vuala Pepsi
pepsi re entry to the market would be a brilliant idea ,this is because customer would have a choice, employee at the bottler level would have for the first time a choice between employers.just be assured more information will be availed to pepsi regarding competition at no cost.
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