Addis Fortune (Addis Ababa)
Jenny Babssa
3 March 2008
Country Trading Plc, sole importer and distributor of AKIRA TV sets, is to become the second company to assemble televisions locally. The company has installed an assembly plant in Nifas Silk Lafto District on a 35,000sqm plot around Hana Mariam.
At a ceremony held at Ghion Hotel last Monday, Benyam Berhane, major shareholder and managing director of Country Trading, disclosed that the assembly plant would lower the current prices of AKIRA TV sets by 20-25pc.
The 14-inch AKIRA TV currently goes for 1,190 Br while the 34-inch model is tagged at 6,990 Br in AKIRA distribution shops.
Established 15 years ago by Benyam and his mother, Amelesha G. Selassie, Country Trading imports beverages, electronics and machineries while it exports agricultural goods and manufactured products. It has projected to spend 30 million Br for this venture.
The pioneer in the business of assembling televisions is United Tebarek & Families Plc, which began assembling Vestel TV sets nine years ago. The company has now cut production by half, according to its major shareholder, Tebarek Mume, assembling 50 TV sets daily.
"We deliberately cut our production in a bid to switch our line to Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) TV sets from our current Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV models," says Tebarek. "The state-of-the art LCD technologies are increasingly demanded for their size and image quality."
Joan Tay Hoon Boon, senior sales executive of TT international who was the invited guest at the ceremony, said that last year Country Trading was able to double sales of AKIRA products.
Ms. Boon told Fortune Ethiopia was chosen for AKIRA product assembly for its cheap labour and available land.
When the local assembly plant goes operational, it is expected to create job opportunities for 1,500 people.
According to Benyam, 90pc of the construction work has been completed and machineries have been imported from the Singapore-based, TT International Limited.
TT International was incorporated in 1984 as TT Importers and Exporters Pte Ltd and later changed its name to TT International Limited. With its warehouse lying on 450,000sqft, the company supplies AKIRA brand electronics to emerging economies worldwide.
Daniel Berhane, commercial manager of Country Trading, told Fortune the company plans to export the TVs to East African addition to supplying the local market.
As of 2002, TV penetration in Ethiopia was 10 per 1,000 people, and only 2.8pc of households had access to television.
AKIRA an international Global brand, which was launched 1994, has been sold in 60 countries across the globe.
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