Coca-Cola move on splitting firm in a few days

Coca-Cola India is likely to take a decision on splitting the company in the next few days.

According to the company's franchisee bottlers who attended a dinner meeting last night with Coca-Cola's worldwide president and chief executive officer E Neville Isdell, the company will take a decision on this after a series of internal discussions scheduled for the next couple of days.

The franchisee bottlers, who account for nearly 23 per cent of the Coke's bottling volumes, could soon find their roles enhanced as the company has decided to realign its bottling operations starting this August.

Globally, the bottling operations will be separated from the corporate and marketing functions.

This would mean Coke's company-owned and franchisee owned bottling operations reporting either to a new bottling head in India or directly to the headquarters in Atlanta.

"Our meeting with Isdell was an opportunity for him to get to know the independent bottlers and understand the operational dynamics better. Coca-Cola India will get back to us with their future plans in the next three-to-four days," said G Ladhani, managing director of the Agra-based bottling company Brindavan Agro Foods.

Coca-Cola's franchisees control a large part its bottling business in the northern and eastern regions. After the split, the company's present management could be left with just the marketing and corporate strategy functions. Coca-Cola India officials refused to comment on the developments.

Another Coke franchisee bottler present at the meeting denied reports of bottlers airing their grievances to Isdell.

There were speculations that bottlers were forced to incur heavy losses with Coca-Cola's affordability strategy.

"The strategy has been in place for sometime now and if we were suffering, we could have taken up the issue with the company's senior international executives incharge of bottling operations who visit the country almost every year," he said.