Zafi Beverages, inc.

Zafi Beverages & Technologies is a beverage development and contract manufacturing company that got its start in 2004 with the launch of Zafi Premium Energy Drinks, produced in the United States through Pepsi-Co bottling. The company introduced Zafi Pumped and Zafi Ultra Light, positioned as some of the first non-carbonated, low-carb, low-calorie energy drinks fortified with vitamins and minerals, and distributed the products through major U.S. retailers including Costco, Jewel-Osco, and Sunset Foods. Building on that beverage-industry experience, the company evolved from a finished-goods energy drink brand into a supplier of filling and packaging machinery and liquid ingredient systems for other manufacturers. Today the company's core offering is filling and packaging lines for water, beverages, dairy, pharmaceutical, and personal care products, sold to small, medium, and large-scale businesses that want to produce, package, and sell their own manufactured goods. Alongside the equipment, it supplies water- and liquid-based flavors and concentrates that customers use on those filling lines, as well as customized energy biscuits made from what the company describes as high-quality ingredients. This combination of hardware, formulated inputs, and technical know-how allows clients across several categories of basic human-needs products to stand up their own production and go to market under their own brands. The company was established in Chicago, Illinois in 1986 as an offshoot of its parent company, Advance International Marketing. Its founder and president, Dr. Zafar A. Bokhari, is also a professor of marketing and international business at Chicago State University, and his "Action Research" methodology - built around third-world economic development and capacity building - underpins much of the company's approach to helping entrepreneurs in developing markets establish new production capacity. Dr. Bokhari has represented the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Commerce as a business delegate on Trade & Investment Missions, and the company describes itself as an international trade delegate under those same federal agencies. Geographically, the company's reach extends well beyond the United States. It has taken part in trade and investment missions to Africa (including Cameroon, Ethiopia, Egypt, Ghana, South Africa, and Morocco), Central and Latin America (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Peru), Eastern Europe (Georgia, Romania, Russia, and other countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States), and Asia (China, Indonesia, and Vietnam). Through these missions the company has worked to place its filling-line model and beverage technology know-how into markets seeking to build local manufacturing capability. A distinguishing element of the company's model is its research and education partnerships. It maintains linkages with universities worldwide, specifically working with colleges of agriculture, business, engineering, and medicine on product research and development. Rather than only selling equipment, the company partners with local universities and entrepreneurs to help them manage their own filling lines and sell their own products, extending its reach through a network of trained operators rather than direct sales alone. To support that entrepreneurial base, it also offers certificate courses in business administration, aiming to build the commercial skills local partners need to run a filling-line business successfully. Target customers include beverage, dairy, pharmaceutical, and personal-care manufacturers of varying scale, along with universities, government trade programs, and individual entrepreneurs in developing economies who want to launch locally produced goods. The company positions its value proposition around applied experience: decades of work spanning beverage brand-building, filling and packaging technology, ingredient formulation, and business education, packaged together so a client can move from concept to a producing, packaging, and selling operation. It describes its aim as extending clients' own resources and expertise rather than replacing them, offering scale and technical scope in filling and packaging equipment, liquid ingredient supply, and workforce and business training that clients could not economically build in-house.