Aquafina hosts a visit from Ebsar Foundation to Sipco Bottling Plant

Press release

Published July 27th, 2011 - 06:17 GMT

Aquafina Water

Aquafina organized a tour of the SIPCO bottling plant in Jeddah for a group of 45 visually impaired children accompanied by 15 supervisors from the Ebsar Foundation.

Planned as an educational and entertaining day out, the trip enabled the children to learn about the production process for Aquafina pure bottled water. Following a tour of the plant the visiting children enjoyed a meal hosted by PepsiCo and SIPCO management, after which commemorative gifts were distributed.

“It was a great pleasure to welcome the children to our plant,” said Ahmed El-Mehelmy, Sales & Marketing Director at SIPCO. “They had a thoroughly entertaining day out and we were most impressed by their enthusiasm to learn about how Aquafina is produced, labeled and bottled. They were absolutely fascinated by the seven stages of the exclusive Aquafina’s HydRO-7™ Purification System and were keen to ask a lot of intelligent questions about the process.”

Speaking on behalf of PepsiCo, Mr. Ibrahim Binaquil, Marketing and PR Manager for GCC markets, said: “I would like to express my appreciation of the excellent work that the Ebsar Foundation does in helping visually impaired children and say what a pleasure it was working with the Ebsar officials to make this tour of the Aquafina plant a great success and an enjoyable day for the kids.”

The Ebsar Foundation for Low Vision and Blind Rehabilitation Services is a non-governmental, non-profit Saudi organization funded by charitable donations and grants.
Ebsar helps people who are visually impaired overcome their disability and enjoy a better quality of life by teaching them skills which enable them to compete on an even basis with their sighted peers in both educational and work places.

The SIPCO Bugshan plant is the bottler of PepsiCo brands in the western region, a business relationship dating back almost 50 years. The Aquafina plant is a very advanced bottling operation that utilizes PepsiCo’s unique and exclusive Hydro 7 purification process to ensure that Aquafina is produced according to the highest international standards. The Saudi Arabian Standards Organization has granted the prestigious SASO award for both the plant and its products.

Background Information

Pepsi Cola International

In 1965, Donald Kendall, the CEO of Pepsi-Cola, and Herman Lay, the CEO of Frito-Lay, recognized what they called “a marriage made in heaven,” a single company delivering perfectly-salty snacks served alongside the best cola on earth. Their vision led to what quickly became one of the world's leading food and beverage companies: PepsiCo.

For more than 50 years, as tastes, trends and lifestyles have changed, PepsiCo has evolved with them. Our willingness to adapt and grow has transformed our snack and soda company into a collection of global brands including Pepsi and Quaker, Gatorade and Tropicana, Frito-Lay and beyond. Today, PepsiCo is one of the world’s most-respected companies with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories and 22 brands that generate more than $1 billion each in estimated annual retail sales.