Seychelles Breweries Limited (SBL) Monday announced an increase of R1.00 on the price of one of its products, EKU, and raised the deposit payable on all the company's bottles from R1.00 to R2.00.

"The price of EKU has gone up by R1.00 to R10.50 and the bottle deposit has been increased by one rupee to R2.00," SBL Managing Director Andrew Richardson (MD) said Monday, noting that the company had had consultations with government on the adjustments.

He said that consumers would understand the rise in the cost of that brand of beer given that the price of EKU was last increased by SBL nine years ago," and since then the prices of ingredients have increased considerably."

He said that SBL had therefore been forced to adjust the price upwards to restore the profitability of the brand. He added, however, that the prices of all other SBL products remained unchanged and the company had no immediate plans to revise the prices.

He explained that although consumers who did not hand in an empty bottle when buying a lemonade that costs R2.25 would pay R4.25, two rupees was the refundable deposit and did not constitute part of the cost of the lemonade itself, which remained unchanged.

He said the deposit on bottles was being increased because "as a responsible company, SBL wants to protect the environment from litter caused by discarded bottles."

The MD told members of the local press that the R1.00 deposit charged previously was introduced 15 years ago, "but since then the value of one rupee has declined, reducing the incentive for people to return our bottles."

He expressed hope that the increased deposit would provide a stronger incentive for SBL product customers to return all bottles, thus protecting the environment.

He said there should consequently be a reduction in the foreign exchange required to purchase new bottles, noting that in the period between November and the end of last year, SBL brought in one million soft drink bottles.

Earlier, SBL's technical manager, Mr Nick Woodgates, had told a Seychelles Nation journalist that inadequacy of bottles set the upper limit in terms of the volume of beverage the company could produce in any given period.

"In October 2002, we brewed a record 10,000 hectolitres of beer, equivalent to almost 3,5000,000 bottles. That was the first time that SBL produced so much in a single month," he said, adding that the company had just taken delivery of 752,000 bottles from Kenya at that time. He said the increase was 20% more than the previous highest volume ever bottled at SBL.

Asked what interest SBL had in the PET (plastic) bottles that the company would be paying R2.00 for, Marketing Manager Denis Payette said that SBL merely ground the bottles and exported the material yielded "at a cost to the company" for eventual use in other products like pottery.

"We do not gain anything from the process, we just want to keep the country clean," he said.

A communiqué from the company Monday said that SBL distributors were already accepting bottles from members of the public and refunding R2.00 for every good bottle.

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