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Iran takes on cola
giants
BRUSSELS - In an ironic
twist on world politics, Iranian-produced Zam Zam Cola
is gearing up to invade Denmark as a first step in its
planned conquest of the whole of the European continent
- a move the company says was aided by growing calls in
both Europe and the Middle East for boycotts of US
products.
The Danish daily newspaper Politiken
quoted Zam Zam director of marketing Bahram Kheiry to
the effect that the company was targeting Denmark in
conjunction with efforts to boost its presence in both
Syria and Lebanon. Kheiry said that the company had
entertained a flood of enquiries from France, Canada,
Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Zam Zam, named after
the Zamzam holy spring in Mecca, was founded in 1954 and
was a longtime partner of Pepsi until its contract was
terminated after the 1979 Islamic revolution, the
Pakistani daily Dawn reports. Currently Zam Zam is sold
in Bahrain, Iraq, Pakistan and several African
countries. Zam Zam currently owns 16 soft-drink
factories in Iran that produce 2.5 billion cans annually
of cola, orange, lemon and mango flavors. It also
produces 100 million cans a year of nonalcoholic beer.
The company's efforts take place against the
backdrop of what some in the Arab world are calling the
"cola wars", in which Middle Eastern nations have been
calling for a regional boycott of US products in
response to the "war on terror". Especially hard hit by
the boycotts have been US fast food companies and their
cola suppliers, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi.
Zam Zam factories have been scrambling to
produce enough Zam Zam to meet the increased demand. In
just four months, Politiken reported, Zam Zam produced
10 million bottles of Zam Zam for export to Saudi Arabia
and other Persian Gulf countries. It also is seeking to
meet a likely surge in demand from the millions of
Muslims expected to make the annual hajj pilgrimage to
Mecca early next year.
According to the Saudi
daily Al-Watan, sales of other US products are dropping
as well in response to the call for boycott; in
particular, sales of US cigarettes have dropped by half
in the past several months.
Zam Zam Cola's
success is spawning imitators. Tawfiq Mathlouti, a
French Muslim businessman, has announced plans to
introduce a soft drink he calls Mecca Cola in Paris next
month, allocating 10 percent of the revenues to the
Palestinian children, the Saudi daily reported.
Zam Zam Cola's sales exceeded all expectations
when 4 million cans were sold in the first week that the
drink made its way into the Saudi market. A Saudi firm
owned by one of the kingdom's princes, Turki Abdallah
al-Faisal, this month signed an agreement with the
Iranian Zam Zam Group, giving the Saudi company
exclusive distribution rights in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
a number of other Arab countries.
Zam Zam Group
chairman Ahmad Taheri said that the drink's success was
"largely due to the Arab and Muslim consumers' boycott
of American products, which affected soft drinks that
carry US-made trademarks". Taheri said he expected a
"good share of the Saudi and Egyptian markets, which are
the most important target markets and which would give
us access to enter other Arab markets in western Asia
and North Africa".
(Asia Times Online)
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