SodaStream Considering Closing Its West Bank Factory
The Israeli firm SodaStream, which has been a target of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, is considering closing its West Bank factory.
CEO Daniel Birnbaum told the Israeli economic publication The Marker that the company, which makes home soft drink machines, will make a decision in the next two months.
Birnbaum said the decision would be based solely on economics.
“The considerations will be purely financial, and do not include the European boycott on manufacturing in the territories,” he told the Marker. “Nor will they include the various calls to boycott products of the company because of its location in Maale Adumim. The boycott is a nuisance, but does not cause serious financial damage. We are not giving in to the boycott. We are Zionists.”
The company is expanding its operations at a new plant in Lehavim, a Negev community near Beersheba in Israel’s South, and could consolidate its operations in whole or in part from the Maale Adumim plant. The company receives a government subsidy for its operations in Beersheba.
The company also has plants in Ashkelon, the Galilee and 20 others around the world.
SodaStream has already fired between 100 and 200 workers at the Maale Adumim plant. There are now 1,100 employees there, of whom 850 are Israeli Arabs or Palestinians, according to the Marker. The plant is expected to employ a significant number of Bedouin Arabs at its Negev plant.
The company was in the news following the signing of actress Scarlett Johansson as a spokeswoman and the ensuing controversy over its West Bank factory. Johansson resigned as a global ambassador for Oxfam over her position with SodaStream.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO