Pak Ab Sabalan
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| Pak Ab Sabalan | |
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| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Ardabil, Iran,Az |
| Key people | N.Raisi, Dr. Kaveh |
| Industry | Beverage |
| Products | Mineral water |
| Revenue |  €10.250 million EUR (2005) |
| Net income |  €1.2 million EUR (2005) |
| Employees | 180 |
| Website | www.pakab.net |
Pak Ab Sabalan Mineral Water Co. is an Iranian privately held manufacturing company, first incorporated in April, 2003, that produces botteled water. The company employs approximately 180 employees and is based in Alvares, Ardabil. Raisi, formerly chief executive officer of ATA Machine MFG. Co., is named the chairperson of PakAb.
Start-up in Sabalan, the mountains of north-west Iran, at a height of approximately 10,000 feet an Iranian entrepreneur has built a greenfield mineral water bottling plant as his entrée into the beverage market. In 2004 he installed a brand-new PET bottling line in second-to-none Krones quality. To provide the operation with full autonomy, the preforms and closures are produced in-house as well. A good idea. There is huge demand in Iran for packaged water, naturally pure and hygienically safe.
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[edit] Spring discovered on a backpacking trip
A few years ago, Raisi was also backpacking through the mountains, admired the 16,000-foot Sabalan peak with the world’s highest mountain lake, and paused a while at the Gurgur spring, which rises out of the rocks at a height of about 10,000 feet. This water, he thought, would appeal to lots of other people as well. Together with an Iranian friend living in Germany, he developed a plan for bottling the water from the Gurgur spring.
[edit] Quality
The Fresenius Institute confirmed the water’s excellent quality in 2003, and initial contacts were established with Krones. Early in 2004, Raisi laid the foundation stone for a bottling plant half-way between the spring and the spa of Sar-ein. A seven-kilometer-long pipeline transports the water from the Gurgur spring to the bottling plant. Krones delivered the bottling line concerned in the winter of 2004, and production began in May 2005.
[edit] The product's name
Vata is a brand of mineral water from Gurgur spring near Ardabil, Iran. It is owned by Pak Ab Sabalan. Raisi gave the water the name of “Vata”, a stroke of nomenclatural genius, which cleverly subsumes a multitude of aspects. In Azari, “V” means “and”, so that “Vata” means “and father”. Yet another dedication to the head of the family. But in many languages, like Russian or English, “Vata” sounds like “water”. What’s more, explains the new CEO Mohammed Maraghechi, leafing through the history books, “Vata” was the god of wind in Persian mythology.
[edit] Autonomous: preforms and closures produced in-house
The company newly founded for this purpose, Pak Ab, first installed a single PET bottling line rated at 20,800 0.5-l bottles an hour or 12,000 1.5-l bottles an hour. Krones supplied the entire line as a turnkey job. To ensure maximized autonomy and independence from delivery times and prices, Pak AB also produces both the preforms and the screw-caps itself. These two production machines, together with the Contiform S8 stretch blow-molding machine, are installed in a separate room, on an elevated level directly adjacent to the actual bottling line.
The freshly blow-molded empty containers are then passed via an air conveyor through a “hole in the wall” to the rinser/filler BLOC, with the closures being fed to the capper by a closure conveyor.
[edit] Compactly dimensioned bottling line
The bottling line itself is extremely compact and user-friendly in its layout, starting with the BLOC, comprising the Variojet twin-channel rotary rinser for sterile air and water plus an option for ozonising, the Mecafill VKP-PET-DL filler and the capper. After the bottles have been filled, a Checkmat F-G inspects them for correct fill level and monitors the position of the closure.
A Contiroll labeler with a double station then dresses the 0.5-l and 1.5-l containers in wrap-around labels. Finally, a Variopac FS-45 film shrink-wrapper forms the containers into multipacks, which are fitted with handles by the applicator provided. The multipacks are then palletized by hand, with the stacks of fulls being secured by a stretch wrapper.
[edit] Advertising boosted by the world’s strongest man
The world’s strongest man is helping to advertise Vata mineral water. Hossein Reza Zadeh, weight-lifting world champion in 2004, comes from Ardabil. Ardabil is also the home of Raisi, who employs 250 people here in a tool-making and automotive component supplier company. His company is called “Ata”, the Turkish/Azerbaijani language word for “father”; the founder gave it this name as a tribute to his father, the firm’s founder.
[edit] The Market
In Iran, Vata is one of the most common brands of bottled water. The sole product for the time still remains the Vata mineral water, about two-thirds of which is packaged in the 1.5-l bottle and one third in the 0.5-l bottle. Vata is offered at consumer prices of around 2,000 Iranian rials (approx. 20 eurocents) per 0.5-l bottle and 2,500 rials (approx. 25 eurocents) for the 1.5-l bottle
