The Coca-Cola Company signed a landmark agreement with a new unified bottling partner for Spain and Portugal – Coca-Cola Iberian Partners – two weeks after Spain’s National Competition Commission and the Portuguese Competition Authority approved the merger of seven Spanish Coca-Cola bottlers.

Muhtar Kent, chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, and Sol Daurella, chair of Coca-Cola Iberian Partners, signed the agreement recently in Madrid along with Marcos de Quinto, president of Coca-Cola Iberia.

The leaders laid out a strategic foundation for the next 10 years, ushering in an exciting era for Coke’s second-largest market in Europe and 11th-largest globally.

“The Coca-Cola Company and our local bottling partners are confident that having one unified bottler in Spain will ultimately prove more efficient and more effective in meeting the needs of our retail and restaurant customers,” Kent said. “While we’ve had a good system here, our bottling partners wanted to come together to become even better at executing with precision for our customers and consumers in this important market. We applaud them for their leadership.”

Daurella added, “It’s of great satisfaction to me and the board of directors to take up the challenge of being recognized and trusted by The Coca-Cola Company after 60 years of history in Spain and Portugal, and also for their belief in our ambitions for the future. We have the best brands, products and team to make it possible.”

The integration process in Iberia, which began two years ago, aims to unify the activities of seven companies with different territorial scopes and to simplify the shareholder system.

“Spain and Portugal are a worldwide example of how to combine the strengths of a global company with the territorial strength of bottling partners," de Quinto explains. "The challenge is to build a model system, exportable to other markets, where we can replicate all the capacities that the Coca-Cola system has shown in the Iberian market.”