coca cola company investor presentation

Growth Strategy

Compounding quality value.

Despite all of the noise and challenges over the past 5 years, our system rallied to focus on winning in the marketplace, and drove revenue above the high end of our long-term targets. We leveraged the crisis as a catalyst to accelerate the business transformation that was already underway. And we did that because through it all we stayed clear on our purpose – which is to Refresh the World, and Make a Difference. We kept this front and center because it allowed us in the early years to re-orient our business and drive ourselves forward, and it allowed us to manage through the pandemic. And today, we remain rooted in that strategy, and continue to strive toward driving the topline and generating returns. We identified key objectives to propel us to a growth trajectory – win more consumers, gain share, maintain strong system economics, strengthen our impact across our stakeholders, and equip our organization to win in the future. These remain our north stars as we continue to navigate the uncertain macroenvironment ahead in the near term.

(a) Non-GAAP

Brand Portfolio Optimization

We put deep analysis into our portfolio optimization process to focus on brands that will continue to drive the Total Beverage Company strategy. We undertook the exercise to shape our portfolio of brands in support of our growth agenda and to ensure we emerge from the crisis strongly. We’ve streamlined our portfolio from 400 to 200 master brands, allowing global category teams to identify the greatest country and category combinations which drive the most effective return on our spend. We aspire to achieve a balanced combination of global, regional and local brands, with scale, that have the strongest potential to help us grow our consumer base, increase frequency and drive system margin accretion. We believe we now have a strong portfolio of brands that will enable us to address all drinking moments and we will continue to grow these brands through focused execution and targeted innovation where relevant.

Note: 2019 data. The two outer donut charts represent the split of brands in terms of 2019 retail value. The innermost donut represents the split in terms of number of brands.

Networked Organization

Our networked organization is coming together and is already changing the way we work – striking the right balance between scale and intimacy. We’ve created global category leads with clear decision rights to modernize our approach to Marketing and Innovation. We’ve established Platform Services to elevate and accelerate data, analytics and insights capabilities in order to accelerate topline and bottom-line growth. This reduces duplication and drives scale. The actions free up time, resources, and energy for growth and facilitate accountability and speed of execution across the frontline areas closest to the consumer.

Brand Building

World-class marketing....

Great marketing begins with human insights – understanding what the consumer wants, making a superior tasting product and through the consumer passion points, telling the brand story in a relatable way. We are shifting our marketing from television experiences, and our new operating structure is wiring us to partner across functions and geographies to create global solutions, enabling us to get even better at what we do best. Coupled with the scale of our new agency partnerships, we feel we’ve never been in a better position to interact with our consumers in end-to-end engagement across mediums outside of traditional media. We believe this will result in more personalized relationships with consumers, adding new drinkers to our brands while allowing for more co-creation and impactful messaging.

growing the consumer base through marketing

(a) Internal estimates for 2023 (b) Change since 2019

… Through Disciplined Resource Allocation

And we will deliver the magic of marketing by being more effective and efficient, fundamentally transforming the way we execute our marketing programs. It means a model that combines commercial prioritization backed by advanced analytics that drives leverage through scale. One area the pandemic fueled us by necessity to reevaluate was our ability to take action with the resources available to us, whether it’s dollars, whether it’s people or whether it’s time.

We always begin our decision-making process from an enterprise view, leveraging the network to focus on what's the most important set of decisions for the enterprise. Our company has invoked a spirit of learning where it's okay to try as long as we learn and iterate better the next time. And last, but certainly not least, we continue to be more data-driven, making great strides turning concepts into real life examples to help drive the growth equation. Across the enterprise, driving a discipline around where we play and how we invest using a very methodical country-category combination algorithm is helping us have confidence that the dollars we're investing can and will generate even greater return.

Complementing our work to build great brands is our disciplined approach to innovation, in order to bring new relevant product or equipment or ideas to the table. Consumer centricity allows us to drive incremental growth through innovation. We are focusing on “more disciplined innovation”, but this does not mean “less innovation”. We are approaching innovation through different lenses and with rigorous objectives: Our pipeline for 2023 has been developed through clear routines and processes to assess the purpose and the right level of innovation. Intelligent experimentation goes beyond new flavors and brands – it also includes product, package and process. It encourages local markets to test the best ideas in a way that enables us to nurture and scale them, allowing us to expand across geographies faster than before.

The digital frontier is vast and has many fronts. Our view of digital is one of an integrated ecosystem of platforms that create value across the digital and physical world. Our digital strategy creates value not only for our consumers and customers but across our organization and our system as well. The pandemic allowed us to accelerate our digital transformation and evolve into an organization that can execute its marketing, commercial, sales and distribution strategy both in the on-line digital world as well as in the physical world.

At the heart of everything lies data, and our recent organizational changes have set us up to leverage data across the enterprise as well as the system. This, combined with cutting-edge digital tools, will facilitate more efficient marketing, strengthen our brands, and improve the execution.

Revenue Growth Management

It goes without saying that strong innovation and marketing would not take flight without excellence in execution. We have taken several steps in the ongoing evolution of our revenue growth management (RGM) agenda. RGM is a key commercial capability that answers critical business questions of ‘Within the priority categories, where is the revenue? Which pack? Which price tier? Which channel? Which customer? Which competitor?’

RGM focuses on identifying revenue pools (where to play) and revenue growth strategies (how to win). It is a capability with different markets being at different points of the journey, and adjusts based on the business objective and changing landscape.

Digital is beginning to play an integral role in our RGM strategy, providing competitive advantages which allow us to make better, more informed decisions faster, by translating data into actionable insights. Digital is improving our perception both at the consumer experience level as well as at the bottler level, driving improved execution.

RGM is iterative and infinite. Thus, we believe we have a long runway ahead of us.

(a) Comparison vs. 2019

Ultimately our success as a company is dependent upon our success as a system, and our bottlers’ ability to grow and thrive in the marketplace. That is why we went through a tremendous transformation over the past several years to put the bottling operations in the hands of the most capable and strategically aligned partners. We are seeing our transformation yielding results.

For example, in South Africa during 2021, we leveraged learnings from strong reusable performance in Latin America to invest in capabilities and activation driving demand for affordable, refillable PET packages and a universal bottle, driving positive results from a revenue, transaction and value standpoint.

Further, in Germany where collection rates are very high, we utilized refillables to expand premium packages for at-home occasions through development of a highly sustainable returnable glass bottle – again driving positive results across metrics.

Note: Data comparisons are 2021 vs 2019 (a) Revenue per unit case and transactions for refillables in South Africa (b) Revenue per unit case for sparkling soft drink refillable glass bottles in Germany

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Coca-Cola (KO) Stays Ahead of Its Industry: Plans on Track

The Coca-Cola Company KO has been an attractive investor pick, thanks to the positive business trends as reflected by its robust surprise history. The company looks well-poised for growth, backed by its innovation efforts and accelerated digital investments. It is on track with its strategy of becoming a total beverage company through the streamlining of its portfolio, focusing on the core brands and investing in its portfolio of brands to meet the evolving needs of consumers.

Coca-Cola has been witnessing strong revenue growth across most of its operating segments, aided by improved price/mix and increased concentrate sales in the past quarters. Gains from these trends got reflected in KO’s fourth-quarter 2023 results, which marked the fourth straight quarter of top and bottom-line beat. Organic revenues rose 12% from the prior-year quarter.

Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have risen 9.6% in the past six months compared with the industry’s growth of 7.5%. The broader sector witnessed a rise of 5.2% in the same time frame.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for KO’s current financial-year sales and earnings suggests growth of 0.2% and 4.5%, respectively, from the year-ago reported numbers.

However, KO continues to witness inflationary cost pressures, related to higher commodity and material costs, as well as higher marketing investments. The persistence of these trends may affect the company’s margins and profitability in the near term.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

Initiatives in Focus

As part of its innovation strategy, Coca-Cola has been keen on diversifying its portfolio. It is on track to tap into the rapidly growing RTD alcohol beverages category. The company has adopted a test-and-learn approach since launching its first RTD in 2018 with Lemon-Dou in Japan. It has been leveraging its leading brands, like Topo Chico, while expanding its existing portfolio of Schweppes premium adult cocktail mixers and tonics.

Coca-Cola has tied up with Molson Coors to launch Topo Chico Hard Seltzer and later launched the Simply Spiked Lemonade in early 2022. It launched another spirit-based drink, FRESCA Mixed cocktails, in collaboration with Corona brewer Constellation Brands in 2022. In June 2022, Coca-Cola collaborated with Brown-Forman to introduce the iconic Jack & Coke cocktail. The new RTD pre-mixed cocktail will be made using Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and Coca-Cola.

Further, the company’s digital initiatives place it well amid the recent splurge in e-commerce demand. It has been accelerating investments to build strong digital capabilities. Coca-Cola is evolving into an organization that efficiently executes marketing, commercial, sales and distribution, both offline and online.

KO is strengthening consumer connections and further piloting numerous digital-enabled initiatives through fulfillment methods, be it B2B to home or B2C platforms in many countries, to capture online demand for at-home consumption. For example, Coca-Cola continues to add outlets and expand its myCoke B2B platform to new markets. The online-to-offline partnerships with multiple food aggregators ensure beverage availability and visibility.

Coca-Cola is progressing well with the rollout of multi-category eB2B platforms with its bottlers globally. For instance, the company’s Wabi digital ecosystem showcases more than 50 categories on the digital platform, which are contributing significantly to its sales growth on the platform outside of Latin America, its home market. The company’s focus on accelerating expansion in digital channels is likely to be sustainable, positioning it for long-term growth.

Hurdles to Cross

Coca-Cola is not immune to the ongoing inflationary cost pressures, related to higher commodity and material costs. Elevated commodity costs have been hurting the company’s cost of goods sold (COGS). A few hyperinflationary markets impacted the fourth-quarter 2023 results. Inflation intensified and exceeded 60% across these markets in the fourth quarter. As a result, COGS increased 3% year over year in fourth-quarter 2023.

For 2024, the company anticipates inflationary cost pressures to impact several aspects of the business, including input costs, transportation, marketing and operating expenses. The company anticipates the hyperinflationary pricing to continue affecting results in 2024 but is likely to moderate throughout the year.

Additionally, the company continues to significantly increase its marketing investments to engage and retain existing consumers, and attract new consumers. Selling, general and administrative expenses increased 11% year over year in the fourth quarter, backed by higher marketing spending.

We have highlighted three better-ranked stocks from the Consumer Staple sector, namely Vita Coco Company COCO, Molson Coors TAP and Coca-Cola FEMSA KOF.

Vita Coco, which develops, markets and distributes coconut water products in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific, currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). COCO shares have declined 7.4% in the past six months. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank stocks here .

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Vita Coco’s current financial year’s sales and earnings per share suggests growth of 1.8% and 24.3%, respectively, from the year-ago reported figures. COCO has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 31.3%, on average.

Molson Coors is a global manufacturer and seller of beer and other beverage products, with an impressive diverse portfolio of owned and partner brands. It has a trailing four-quarter earnings surprise of 37.2%, on average. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Molson Coors’ current financial-year sales and earnings suggests growth of 1.4% and 4.2%, respectively, from the prior-year reported levels. TAP shares have risen 10.7% in the past six months.

Coca-Cola FEMSA is involved in producing, marketing and distributing soft drinks throughout the metropolitan area of Mexico City. It currently carries a Zacks Rank #2. KOF shares have rallied 25.4% in the past six months.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for KOF’s current financial-year sales and earnings suggests growth of 10.1% and 25.5%, respectively, from the year-earlier actuals. It has a trailing four-quarter negative earnings surprise of 2.1%, on average.

To read this article on Zacks.com click here.

Marvel and Coca-Cola Assemble for an Unprecedented Global Campaign

Two of the mightiest brands in pop culture are assembling for an unprecedented global campaign.

On Monday, The Walt Disney Company and Coca-Cola launched Coca-Cola x Marvel: The Heroes — an innovative collaboration featuring some of Marvel’s most popular characters.

In the limited-time campaign, the two beloved brands are bringing the world of Marvel to life with a brand-new TV commercial, as well as a never-before-seen consumer experience featuring exclusive, limited-edition Coca-Cola pack designs featuring 38-character illustrations.

The new line of exclusive cans and bottles will feature heroes and villains from across the Marvel Universe. Illustrated with a balance of white, red, and black tones that highlight the characters, each can is scannable and brings its character to life through an AR extension on Coca-Cola’s website.

In addition to the collectable cans and innovative AR experience, Coca-Cola x Marvel: The Heroes offers fans a chance to win exciting prizes from Disney and Marvel, including the Ultimate Fan Experience, Disney Cruise, Marvel movie screenings, collectable influencer boxes, movie tickets, autographed memorabilia, and Disney+ subscriptions.

“Our corporate alliance with Coca-Cola uniquely positioned us to develop something remarkably innovative within the industry,” Mindy Hamilton, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing Partnerships at The Walt Disney Company, said. “We took the traditional marketing paradigm and redefined it in the best way possible.”

Hamilton added that the result is “an unprecedented campaign that taps into the power of the Marvel Universe” and “tells stories in a way that can only be done when Coca-Cola and Disney come together.”

The collaboration kicks off with a new TV spot that showcases a woman, who accidentally puts an entire comic book world in danger. Then, the real magic of Coca-Cola unites the Marvel Universe to save the day.

For nearly 85 years, Marvel has inspired millions of fans with diverse characters and timeless stories and now Coca-Cola is bringing these heroes to its iconic bottles while continuing its relationship with Disney that began more than 60 years ago.

“Coca-Cola has a long history with Disney, and it’s exciting to have a relationship that encourages and enables us to continue to push ourselves and our relationship to new heights creatively,” Islam ElDessouky, Global Head of Creative Strategy and Content for Coca-Cola TM, added. “This latest collaboration with Marvel allows us to tap into the legacy and affinity for both brands to deliver consumers new and unexpected experiences.”

The Marvel characters featured in 38 designs across the limited-edition products include:

Coca-Cola : Blade, Cable, Colossus, Daredevil, Deadpool, Elektra, Juggernaut, Kingpin, Loki, Moon Knight, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Wolverine, Nick Fury, Storm (US Only), Super Skrull, War Machine
Coca-Cola Zero Sugar : Ant-Man, Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Doctor Strange, Groot, Hulk, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, Rocket, Scarlet Witch, Shang-Chi, Star-Lord, Thanos, Thor

Starting today, fans can collect characters from this exciting new collaboration in stores globally. Coca-Cola x Marvel: The Heroes will be available in more than 50 countries worldwide across North America, Latin America, Europe, China, Japan, and Asia Pacific.

The Coca-Cola x Marvel: The Heroes collaboration marks the latest way fans can express their Marvel fandom, as Marvel remains one of the world’s most prominent character-based entertainment companies — built on a library of more than 8,000 characters featured in comic books, consumer products, films, series, theme park attractions & lands, and more.

Around the world with Coca-Cola

When he started his career, Bill Douglas (BBA ’83) didn’t think of himself as a world traveler.

He grew up in Warner Robins, went to the University of Georgia, married his sweetheart and snagged a great job at Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta. Things were set.

“One Friday afternoon, my boss’s boss walked into my office and said, ‘Hey, we have an opportunity for somebody to go over to Spain for six months on a short-term assignment, would you be willing and interested in doing this?,” Douglas, who at the time didn’t have a passport, told UGA students gathered for the Terry College’s International Business Week keynote on April 12.

“So, we went to Madrid for six months. We had a wonderful time and were exposed to a lot of things — both professionally and culturally — that I hadn’t really had before … And pretty much immediately upon coming back to Atlanta, I moved over to the international side of the business.”

Douglas retired in 2016 as chief financial officer and executive vice president of Coca-Cola Enterprises, the entity managing Coca-Cola’s network of bottling plants and distributors.

While he hadn’t planned a career in international business, he spent decades living and working in Europe, bringing Coca-Cola to new markets, including former Soviet republics.

“One of the experiences that illustrate the way Coke was marketed internationally was in the former Soviet Union,” he told students. “Those markets had pretty much never been exposed to the product before. They had been exposed to the brand, and they understood what it was. But we were trying to get people to try it for the first time, and we also had an issue of affordability.”

Douglas shared the process of retrofitting Soviet soft drink factories and working with Russian leaders to develop post-Soviet business standards.

“There was no private land ownership in Russia,” he said. “We had to work with the Moscow city government and the national government and explain how to set up a land register and have private land ownership. We weren’t going to invest $25 million in a factory if we didn’t own the land and felt secure about the ownership of that land.”

Douglas also spent nearly an hour answering students’ practical questions about networking challenges and finding mentors while working abroad. He urged students to focus on developing a core skillset and keep an open mind about career opportunities.

“It’s very important to have a plan, to say, ‘These are the things that I aspire to achieve, and I’d like to do this and my career,’ ” Douglas said. “But I always say, put that plan in pencil. You don’t know what opportunity is going to present itself.”

Douglas’s talk was part of a weeklong celebration of International Business programs at the Terry College, including an alumni roundtable, a study abroad fair and an international business photo contest.

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Clinton Chooses Coke in Russia's Cola War

By Alessandra Stanley

May 11, 1995

When President Clinton decided to make one detour from his Moscow summit-meeting agenda to publicize a successful American business investment in Russia, he chose Coke.

The President plans to visit a $65 million Coca-Cola plant near here on Thursday morning. Pepsi, which has already been losing market share to Coca-Cola in the former Soviet Union, was not thrilled with the decision.

Now that the competition between the two superpowers has ebbed into an edgy partnership, the frenzied rivalry between the world's two largest soft-drink manufacturers is perhaps one of the more ardent of the post-Communist era. Mr. Clinton's choice was an example of the effectiveness of the aggressive marketing that has helped Coke break through its rival's Communist-era dominance in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

The Coke plant in the town of Solnovo, 17 miles from downtown Moscow, is wholly owned by the Coca-Cola Company and even boasts its own "Coca-Cola University," where Russian employees are drilled in the fine points of the American soft-drink business.

That is one reason Mr. Clinton chose to visit it. Joint ventures in Russia with foreign investors have suffered bad publicity of late, the consequence of myriad disputes between Russian and American partners.

Pepsico Inc. also has a bottling plant outside Moscow, but it is a joint venture with a Russian partner. Pepsi executives declined to comment on the Presidential visit to their rival's plant.

The Coca-Cola cause has also been helped by the company's ardent courting of Mr. Clinton's representatives in Moscow. The American Ambassador to Russia, Thomas R. Pickering, visited the plant earlier this year.

And it didn't hurt that the gleaming new Coke plant, with its happy Russian workers, provided an excellent photo opportunity for the President -- or that it was situated so conveniently on the route of his motorcade back to the airport.

Historical forces could also be at work in Mr. Clinton's decision. In popular lore, Coca-Cola has been the drink of the Democrats and Pepsi-Cola the beverage of the Republicans. In recent years Coke has contributed more to Democratic candidates than Pepsi and Pepsi has contributed more to Republicans.

In World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt asked a Coca-Cola executive to help supply cola to the troops overseas, and before long Coke had set up bottling plants all over the world.

When the Communist state ran the Soviet economy, Pepsi developed a cozy relationship with the Kremlin, and by extension the Soviet bloc, after a visit to Moscow by Vice President Richard M. Nixon in 1959. During that visit, the chairman of Pepsi, Donald Kendall, met with Nikita S. Khrushchev.

In 1972, after Mr. Nixon had become President, Pepsi became the first foreign consumer product to be sold in the Soviet Union.

A few years later Coke found a champion in Jimmy Carter, who replaced Pepsi machines in the White House with Coke machines after he was elected President. The Carter connection may also have helped Coke to become one of the first foreign products sold in China after Chinese-American relations thawed in 1979.

"It's a great honor to have the President of the United States visit our company," said Michael A. O'Neill, head of the Coca-Cola operations in Russia. "And we will be bringing a certain amount of attention to that."

Coca-Cola has brought a great deal of attention to itself during the last four years, with splashy concert and sports promotions, ubiquitous nationwide television advertising and giant billboards and kiosks. Its red-and-white logo is plastered all over Moscow.

Pepsi is quite literally more underground. Pepsico made a deal with the Moscow city government in 1993 to put mobile food stands selling Pepsi, New York hot dogs and Taco Bell burritos in the busiest subway stations in Moscow.

Despite heavy marketing and advertising, Pepsi has lost ground to Coke throughout most of Eastern Europe and the rest of the former Communist world. In 1994 Coke took the lead in soft-drink sales in 10 of the 15 former republics of the Soviet Union, including Armenia, Lithuania and Georgia, breaking the lock that Pepsi held before the Communist bloc began to splinter in 1989.

Russia, with a population of more than 150 million, is where the competition is most acute. Pepsi still retains a strong lead, but Coca-Cola has narrowed the advantage of its rival to 2 to 1 last year, from 4 to 1 in 1993.

After Soviet Communism collapsed, Pepsi was left with a vast network of state-run bottling companies, most of which it kept. Coke, which introduced Fanta in Russia in 1979 and Coca-Cola in 1985, had only a limited presence before 1991. It moved far more quickly to cut its ties to state-run bottling companies and import its own manufacturing and marketing techniques than Pepsi.

When the Berlin wall fell in 1989, and people behind the Iron Curtain were suddenly infatuated with all things Western, Coke had the psychological advantage of seeming like an American soft drink. Pepsi had been around for so long that many Russian consumers saw it as a local beverage.

Pepsi has invested money in new equipment and advertising, but it has not invested nearly as much as Coke, which has poured $1.5 billion into Eastern Europe and $240 million into Russia alone.

But for all their money and energy, Pepsi and Coke combined have yet to overwhelm Russian consumers. American and European soft drinks have only captured 20 percent of the Russian market, and it is a pretty small market at that.

Rough industry estimates suggest that Russians drink 40 to 50 eight-ounce soft-drink servings per capita a year. In the United States, the figure for 1993 was 808 eight-ounce servings, said John Sicher, executive editor of Beverage Digest, a newsletter based in Greenwich, Conn.

And Russian consumers, and even soft-drink salespeople, can be cynical.

"Pepsi and Coke are about the same," said Nina Zikova, who is 48 and sells cigarettes and soft drinks from a cramped kiosk in Moscow, on which hangs a giant Coca-Cola logo. The company that owns her kiosk has an exclusive contract with Coca-Cola, but she said she was skeptical that there was a difference between her product and the rival one. She added with a shrug, "They all come from the same bottle."

City Architects Uncapping Moscow Business Future

A basic box building to go up soon in Moscow will be something of a commercial revolution for the former Soviet Union. The first plant in Russia to manufacture Coca-Cola syrup, the project is being designed by Oklahoma City architects and engineers.

Since last April, a team from The Benham Group has been at work designing the Moscow industrial site. An international company headquartered in Oklahoma City, Benham is one of several United States practices that regularly design industrial projects for the Coca-Cola Co. of Atlanta.

"More than any other symbol, Coca-Cola says American to people anywhere in the world," said Richard P. Vestal, a Benham vice president and project manager for the Moscow plant. He and others on the planning and design team say they were never more aware of that as on several trips in and out of Russia since the planning work began.

In Pushkin Square in the heart of Moscow, Vestal said there is a huge Coke sign that lights up an otherwise dismal city.

"Everything is dim and dirty. The headlights of cars are dim, and most of the street lamps don't have bulbs in them. And here was this familiar, bright red logo. It was the one bright spot, and it really gives you a good feeling," he said.

Also, the project represents a venture of the Russian people into free enterprise, Benham senior vice president Larry Roach said. Coca-Cola - which also is the first joint stock company in Russia - negotiated a 49-year lease on the five-acre site. It was the first real estate transaction in the history of Russia.

"They even had to acquire a book, the original book, for the registry. This was the No. 001 deal," said Roach, who heads the firm's international program. The lease also was the most difficult part of the project to accomplish to date, Benham officials said.

"The only thing the Russian people really have is their natural resources, and they own that. They feel like if you lease it, you lose control," Vestal said. "This being the first, it was fairly traumatic to lease land to an American company for 49 years. The politicians were genuinely concerned about the public perception of this agreement. It required 27 signatures on the long-term lease," mostly Moscow officials. It also took Coca-Cola officials about 18 months to negotiate, he said.

Coca-Cola, the Russian division of Coke, and a private owner formed the Coca-Cola Refreshments Moscow as the first completely independent, joint stock company in greater Moscow. The company has a western-style corporate structure governed by stockholders and a board of directors. S.N. Fyodorov, a prominent Russian businessman, also has a stake in the venture, Coke spokesman Michael O'Neill said.

The $12 million Moscow building is a fast-track project.

Construction will begin in February, and it is scheduled to be in operation in 18 months. At the end of the month, Michael Tower, Benham senior architect and a project manager, will move to Moscow.

His family will join him at the end of the school term, and they will remain until the project is operating. A second staff member, not yet appointed, will join him in a few months, Vestal said.

"What makes the plant special is the processes it will house and the implementation of those processes to maintain the level of product the Coca Cola company requires," he said. "It represents the high company standards for good manufacturing practices and sanitation within the area in which the product is made. " Besides Coca-Cola syrup, the plant will produce Fanta products, another Coca-Cola line of soft drinks.

Benham staff members are providing design and construction management services including training of workers. Once it's completed, Benham will have full responsibility for training Russian employees to operate and maintain the operation.

Bottled and canned Coke have been sold in Russia since the early 1970s, and there are 14 bottling plants scattered throughout the country now known as the Commonwealth of Independent States. But the Moscow site is the first to produce Coke's famous secret-formula syrup, and it makes it possible for Russians to have fountain Cokes for the first time.

The drinks will be retailed in a variety of outlets, including small, two-man vending kiosks to be spotted about Moscow and beyond. Initially, 400 of these will be placed in Moscow, and there are long-range plans for 2,000, Vestal said.

"Our factory will be the distribution center for canned products, but bottle Cokes will still come from the 14 bottling plants," Vestal said.

Following a corporate policy of Coca-Cola, the project will use as much material as possible from the area where it is being built, Vestal said. In keeping with this, the building facade will be primarily an insulated sandwich paneling, with aluminum face, manufactured in the south of Moscow. Other construction materials will include Russian brick and mortar.

A third company involved in the Coke factory is a Russian construction firm. It has been involved in the permitting process from the outset and actually will build the plant. When completed, the factory will provide jobs for about 100 Russian workers.

The project will not be as automated as some Coca-Cola plants, because it is smaller than some and is being designed for easy maintenance of equipment and availability of parts. When completed, it will use Russian raw materials, including locally-grown sugar.

The site is located in a state-developed industrial park, and is about two blocks from Moscow's first McDonald's Restaurant. The Christmas Sunday meal for Vestal, architect Tower and corporate vice president Ken Nelson last month was a Big Mac.

"We couldn't find a place to sit, so we ate standing up," Vestal said.

Except for the location, it might have been an austere observance of the holiday season. They left for home on the day the treaty was signed to dissolve the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics.

In three trips to Moscow, Vestal often saw lines four blocks long snaking around the McDonald's. "But they moved pretty fast. It has 27 counters. " There's little doubt the plant will find a huge market. Benham people learned something of the Russian taste for Coke during planning sessions, when Russian team members would consume four or five Cokes during each meeting.

"They would ask to take a couple with them when they left," Vestal said. "A Coke costs about a dollar over there. That's 120 rubles and that may be a quarter of a week's pay for the average worker. " BIOG: NAME:

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The Coca‑Cola Company Announces Sustainability Presentation

ATLANTA, Oct. 26, 2020 – The Coca‑Cola Company today announced that Bea Perez, Chief Communications, Sustainability & Strategic Partnerships Officer, and Lori Billingsley, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, will discuss the company’s approach to sustainability, diversity and inclusion during a webcast for investors on Nov. 13 at 11 a.m. ET.

Perez and Billingsley will discuss the company’s sustainability strategy and goals, response to COVID-19 and stance on racial equity, among other topics. The company invites investors to join the webcast at www.coca-colacompany.com/investors .

Investors can also learn more in advance of the event by viewing the company’s most recent Business and Sustainability Report at https://www.cocacolacompany.com/reports/business-sustainability-report-2019

About The Coca‑Cola Company

The Coca‑Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is a total beverage company with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories. Our company’s purpose is to refresh the world and make a difference. Our portfolio of brands includes Coca‑Cola, Sprite, Fanta and other sparkling soft drinks. Our hydration, sports, coffee and tea brands include Dasani, smartwater, vitaminwater, Topo Chico, Powerade, Costa, Georgia, Gold Peak, Honest and Ayataka. Our nutrition, juice, dairy and plant-based beverage brands include Minute Maid, Simply, innocent, Del Valle, fairlife and AdeS. We’re constantly transforming our portfolio, from reducing sugar in our drinks to bringing innovative new products to market. We seek to positively impact people’s lives, communities and the planet through water replenishment, packaging recycling, sustainable sourcing practices and carbon emissions reductions across our value chain. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people, helping bring economic opportunity to local communities worldwide. Learn more at www.coca-colacompany.com and follow us on Twitter , Instagram , Facebook and LinkedIn .