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13.10.2018 Business & Finance

Promote Local Brands - GIHOC Distilleries Urges

By GNA
Promote Local Brands - GIHOC Distilleries Urges
13.10.2018 LISTEN

The GIHOC Distilleries Company, Ghana's only surviving distillery, has launched the 'Apet dry gin' with a call on government to support the push to get hotels in the country to patronise made-in Ghana gins.

Squadron Leader (Rtd) Ebo Bartels, the Board Chairman of GIHOC Distilleries Company Limited, urged the Ministers of Tourism, Finance and Trade to encourage restaurants and hotels to restrict its reliance on foreign drinks and rather serve the local ones.

He said the action was necessary to curd the influx of foreign drinks finding their ways into hotels at the expense of the locally manufactured alcoholic beverages.

He said most hotels were not serving locally manufactured alcoholic beverages at their facilities, saying that, no country would tolerate the influx of foreign goods at the expense of local ones.

He said GIHOC Distilleries is the only brand, which has survived the test of time, out of the 23 subsidiaries that formed the conglomerate, the GIHOC Group set up some 60 years ago and therefore there was the need to promote the brand to make it more viable.

Squadron Leader (Rtd) Bartels said what had kept the company going is the determination to produce quality alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages to satisfy customers and maximise expectations of key stakeholders.

He said the company is committed to becoming the preferred alcoholic beverage company returning great value and profit to government, the only shareholder.

He said the company's new product was a perfect example of government's 'Ghana beyond Aid' agenda as Apet dry gin was produced mostly from local inputs and only about 10 per cent of imports.

On his part, Mr Maxwell Kofi Jumah, the Managing Director of GIHOC Distilleries, said the new product originated from the country's own local gin 'akpeteshie', sampled and tested by well-equipped laboratory with experienced quality control scientists to ensure that the product was not polluted with any additives or mixtures.

He said the 'Apet dry gin' was double distilled, adding that 'after passing several scientific processes, the harmful gases and chemicals, including methane gas, have been taken out of the akpeteshie'.

Mr Jumah said the company was offering its cherished consumers, an extremely smooth world class gin that also maintains the characteristics of akpeteshie minus the bad breadth.

He said the company represented quality and excellence in the Ghanaian alcoholic industry and therefore had taken considerably time to carefully manufacture and prepare the Apet dry gin, devoid of all toxins and unhealthy additives, making it a much safer and healthier for consumers.

GNA
By Julius K. Satsi, GNA

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