South Africa's Consol Glass, the largest glass manufacturer on the continent, has announced plans to build a ZAR 400M furnace in an expansion project that would provide an extra 15% capacity, equivalent to 90,000 tons of glass, to meet booming consumer demand for glass containers. The investment will take Consol's total annual production to over 3BN bottles, or 845,000 tons of glass. The South African container glass market is expected to reach 1M/tpa over the next 12m & will represent, by value, about 11% of the total packaging market. Consol group MD Mike Arnold said: "Despite the injection of approximately 25% new capacity, which will be completed by early July this year, SA's demand for glass containers on the back of a growing economy & increasing consumer preference for glass packaging will in the short term exceed local manufacturincapacity." South African Breweries recently announced it was running out of bottles because of "unusually" high demand for beer. The company said high demand, especially for brands in returnable bottles, had reduced the availability of 750ml quarts, forcing it to start importing 20,000 tons of glass a month to relieve the shortages. Spokeswoman Shirley Scriven said the higher demand for non-returnable bottles had resulted in glass shortages from major suppliers, and a temporary shortage of stocks in certain brands. The company would continue importing glass until the end of 2007.
