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.”
COCA-COLA ON SOCIAL