15 Oct 2025

Abotle Beverages, a Botswana citizen owned, 100 per cent fruit juice producing company, is projected to employ over 1,000 once fully operational.

The company’s chief executive officer, Mr Joseph Gabalebatse said the plan was to outsource services as logistics for the Southern Africa target market. We are talking mass production with some working in the factory like cleaners, administrators, then there will be those indirectly employed like logistics, Mr Gabalebatse said.

He said they employed young people of ages ranging from 18 to 29 as agents, earning between P12,000 to P15,000. We realised that employing them on a fixed salary would kill their creativity, marketing skills and business acumen, Mr Gabalebatse explained.

“We are big on youth empowerment. These are the youth that once we get settled, we will absorb. This is an interim arrangement and looking at them, it is like they prefer it the way it is. We have paid for some of them at LEA to enroll for some business management courses,” he said.

With a two-year shelf life, a standard that sets Abotle Beverages apart from other produce, Mr Gabalebatse attributed the quality to the ingredients they used.

 “We use only one ingredient which is the fruit. We do not add any sugar. We do not add any water. We do not add any colourants. We do not add anything,” he said, and explained that they used an American self-preservation technology, which was by means of pumping gas into the can.

The technology is patented and therefore, could not disclose the name of the gas except to explain that, once the gas is infused into the juice, it does not temper with its natural state, leaving the taste as it were on the mother fruit.

Mr Gabalebatse said they had gone through all the tests and complied with National Agricultural Research and Development Institute and Botswana Bureau of Standards specifications. The juice is packaged in Vietnam but remains a Botswana product because the recipe originates in Botswana by Abotle Beverages.

“We find ourselves in an unfortunate situation because we do not have enough fruits to make this kind of juice. A can of Abotle orange juices needs around 12 oranges to make. Therefore, a container carries 3 000 cases. So, if you multiply 12 by the number of cases in a container, it means for one container, you need more than 800 000 oranges. We do not have that,” he said.

To achieve the objective of producing pure juice without compromising the standards, Mr Gabalebatse said they looked for a contract manufacturer and found one in Vietnam.

Contract manufacturers have factories but use recipe of the company that conceived the idea. Vietnam has organic soils because of the tropical climate conditions, abundant fruits and big manufacturing plants, Mr Gabalebatse said.

The CEO said they wanted the juice packaged in Botswana and were in talks with Botswana Investment and Trade Centre, to bulk break, which meant importing in large containers to be locally packaged. He said manufacturers were also keen on partnering with Abotle Beverages and also carried out skills transfer.

Mr Gabalebatse also said they were in talks with Special Economic Zones Authority to have the juice packaged in Botswana, to reduce costs while at the same time creating employment. He said production started in June, and had sold over 2 000 cases.

We used a bottom up approach by selling to individuals, tuck shops, fuel stations, guest houses and hotels rather than chain stores, to launch and introduction the product, as well as create demand, Mr Gabalebatse said. ENDS