The FINANCIAL — JSC Healthy Water (Tskali Margebeli), the leading Georgian water producer in the country, has entered the UAE, Cambodian and Chinese markets in 2015. The number of its export countries has now reached 25. While the majority of Georgian exporters remain dependent on CIS countries, Nabeghlavi remains devoted to its long-term strategy – market diversification. Asia is a focus of Nabeghlavi’s now. The popularity of the Georgian spring water Nabeghlavi has been confirmed once again, this time by its placement for sale on global e-commerce company amazon.com.
Healthy Water plans to maintain stable growth throughout 2015. “Despite the increased foreign exchange risks the company will continue constant investment in modern technologies. We will actively work on market diversification, in order to attract monetary reserves. Next to its traditional markets, the company plans to acquire Asian markets. In 2015 we entered the UAE, Cambodian and Chinese markets. We believe that the unique features and distinctive quality of Nabeghlavi will guarantee its further successful development in different countries,” Avtandil Svimonishvili, General Director at Healthy Water, told The FINANCIAL.
The story of Healthy Water began in the last century, about 18 years ago.
In 1997 Swiss and Georgian partners established a company which offered Georgian market Bakhmaro and Nabeghlavi production. Currently it is the leader of the local mineral water market. The company is leading as customers are always very loyal towards this brand. Customers’ loyalty and love for it is due to the untiring work of the team which manages the company. Despite the unstable surrounding environment, the team is always oriented on development. However, the company never forgets about the brand’s traditions. In the Georgian reality it is difficult to achieve this goal, but the Healthy Water team did it.
The story of Nabeghlavi started in 1905, when a source of new mineral water was discovered in the territory of Guria, in Western Georgia. Local inhabitants of the region noticed that buffalo were especially attracted to one of the water sources, says the legend. The very same source later turned out to have a special taste and curative properties.
The bottling of Nabeghlavi mineral water was initiated in 1958, following the establishment of a health resort in the ecologically pure environment of the village Nabeghlavi, which in turn was determined by revealing the water’s unique curative properties. At that time the water production output and distribution area was considerably smaller. Later, in 1997, Healthy Water started leading the production.
Healthy Water did not stop at producing Nabeghlavi, and introduced Bakhmaro Spring water in 2002. The production facilities include an elaborate system of pipelines connecting several bore wells and the bottling plant, situated in the village Nabeghlavi, near to the sources. The plant is equipped with state-of-the-art European automatic bottling lines from KRONES, with a capacity of 30,000 bottles per hour.
The highest quality of Healthy Water production is proven by a Certificate of Conformity with EU standards and ISO 9001:2000. In addition, Healthy Water has just become the winner of Golden Brand once again.
Particular attention is devoted to the study of the development of water boring wells and their care, in which the company has invested millions of Georgian Lari.
“The volume of production at Nabeghlavi increased in 2014, in comparison with the previous year. Due to a natural disaster in late July, our bottling plant, located in the Nabeghlavi village of the Chokhatauri region, was stalled for several days. Asides from this case the plant has been working without interruption. In order to improve production processes the company regularly introduces new technologies. With the expense of modern machinery and technical equipment we constantly improve the quality of the products and minimization of production costs. Intensive development and control of production processes contributes to the competitiveness of our product on the domestic, as well as foreign markets,” Svimonishvili said.
In 2014 the company re-entered the Uzbek and Russian markets. The management has been dynamically developing distribution on the existing markets.
Nabeghlavi is exported to 25 countries. Due to export, the most strategic markets are: Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Turkey and the U.S.
In Svimonishvili’s words, the main strategy of our company is sustainable growth of the existing export countries and finding new markets.
The export share of Nabeghlavi to Ukraine and Russia was reduced in 2014 in comparison with the previous years. It was not unexpected for the management, considering the current situation in the region.
According to Svimonishvili, the recent GEL devaluation had a negative impact on the company’s financial conditions. However, he added that on some financial parameters it carried a positive impact.
“Our export revenues have been increased due to the devaluation of the national currency. However the basic materials of production are purchased in foreign currencies. Due to the absence of competitive local production the self-cost of the product has been significantly increased. To sum up, the revenue received from export cannot cover the impact caused by devaluation of the national currency. The profit margin of the company in 2015 has been decreased,” said Svimonishvili.
Finding Georgian spring water on the global e-commerce portal, amazon.com has been a pleasant surprise for all Georgians. “One of the American sub-distributor companies has registered Nabeghlavi with the online shop amazon.com. The control of such cases is a bit complicated. We try hard to avoid it. At the same time we consider it to be additional promotion. Many more people will now get to know about Nabeghlavi, in line with the daily boosting of the popularity of online shops,” Svinomishvili said.
The price per four bottles of Nabeghlavi on amazon.com is USD 23.75. Svimonishvili said that the high cost of Nabeghlavi on amazon.com can be explained by the high quality of the product.
“Our partner distributor companies have been actively promoting Nabeghlavi on international markets. The high quality of this product allows us to further expand awareness of this brand not only in CIS states, but elsewhere too,” Svimonishvili told The FINANCIAL.
Discussion about this post