SodaStream's Israeli owners are repositioning the brand to make a comeback in South African kitchens as a cheaper, healthier and more environmentally-friendly alternative to soft drinks but rival beverage makers say South Africans are far more interested in convenience.
At the zenith of the home carbonation system craze in the 1980s, Cadbury Schweppes bought SodaStream. Its fortunes had waned by the time it sold to Soda Club in 1998. "It has an old-fashioned image, that is still the perception in South Africa," admitted SodaStream sales and marketing manager Guy Rogers.
But the company, of which Israeli private equity fund Fortissimo took control in 2007, decided a year ago to focus on producing healthier syrups and take advantage of greater environmental awareness as it relaunched its range of products, Rogers said.
Global sales are up 40 percent for the year to date. South African sales were up 28 percent in the first quarter, but Rogers would not disclose the base off which the increase came. He estimated there were 280 000 active SodaStream systems in use in South African households currently. About 40 000 past users had been lost from the 1980s peak.
The company issued a press release saying that South African consumers were joining the fight against bottled water "which many believe are unnecessary, costly and harmful to the environment and possibly to drinkers themselves". It decried the "scourge of PET (polyethylene terephthalate) bottles" in South Africa as three quarters of these were not recycled.
But Casper Durandt, Coca-Cola South Africa's technical operations manager, said South African consumers picked convenience over environmental considerations "every time. I see no correlation between shopper habits and environmental awareness."
Durandt conceded there was a global shift away from bottled water, and that the carbon footprint of a bottled beverage was bigger than that of home carbonated drink because SodaStream systems typically used tap water.
But he said Coca-Cola was reducing its environmental impact across a range of areas, including minimising water use. The South African unit of the multinational group would from next year initiate a PET bottle exchange recycling project and build a PET recycling plant.
Durandt also questioned the quality of tap water locally. Coca-Cola's 17 plants measured water quality on a daily basis. "Most of the times they get it right, but not always," he said. "Herbicides and pesticides come off surface water. It's not dangerous in trace elements but I'd not like to drink that as a consumer."
SodaStream, however, said South African municipal water supplies were held to "very high standards" and were constantly monitored.
According to a 2005 Swiss study on the environmental impact of bottled water, it has an environmental impact between 90 and 1 000 times that of tap water. The difference is more pronounced the farther the bottled water is transported to the customer and depends on the mode of transport.