Coke International ‘uniquely positioned’ to capture $300bn beverage growth

By Ben BOUCKLEY

- Last updated on GMT

Coke International ‘uniquely positioned’ to tap $300bn beverage growth

Related tags Asia pacific The coca-cola company Coca-cola

Coca-Cola International president Ahmet Bozer insists his company is uniquely positioned to capture a $300bn world growth opportunity between 2014 and 2020.

Speaking at the recent Barclays Back to School Conference in Boston, Bozer (pictured) said the figure represented the industry value opportunity minus North America.

Coke International – which consists of the company’s Asia Pacific, Europe, Eurasia & Africa and Latin American operations, delivers around 80% of The Coca-Cola Company’s operating income, with the 60% of its business coming from emerging and developing markets.

“We as Coke International are positioned very uniquely to capture that opportunity in a big way for a number of reasons,”​ Bozer said, emphasising the company’s strong brands (17 billion-dollar brands) reach and overall market position.

“First of all, we have more or less 30% of the industry value share, a fairly strong position. We have an incredible reach reaching over 20m customers,” ​he said.

Even in a very challenging and difficult macro and political environment to date, Bozer said, Coke had been able to drive top and bottom-line growth in all its operating units.

In Europe, the company grew its top line faster than its bottom line due to the acquisition and consolidation of Innocent, he said.

Meanwhile, the Latin American business in Eurasia and Africa business had posted “fairly healthy top and bottom line growth, and Asia Pacific also is pointing to healthy growth”.

To unlock future growth in sparkling and stills Coca-Cola International focused on “two simple facts”, ​Bozer explained.

Firstly growing disposable income levels – as a result of middle-class urbanization – and territories with low per capita consumption levels, with Coke’s priorities driven by “accelerating our sparkling and selectively expanding our stills portfolio”.

In sparkling success depended on the right price/pack architecture to cater for different consumer needs combined with strong marketplace execution, he said.

Bozer gave the example of a 300ml PET bottle sold in The Philippines for 10 pesos as an ‘entry level’ package – he said this was gaining share and consumption among teens.

“We believe the sparkling opportunity is there,”​ Bozer said. “Because of the fact that half of the world’s population have not had a Coke in the last 30 days, there’s 600m teenagers who have had not had a Coke in the last week.

“So the opportunity for that is huge. As we bring good marketing, good execution and good pricing and packaging to bear around the world through our system, we will be capturing that opportunity,”​ he added.

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