Soft drink giant The Coca-Cola Company has signed a 10-year bottling deal with the recently merged bottling business - Coca-Cola Iberian Partners - for Spain and Portugal.
Coca-Cola Iberian Partners is a merger of seven Spanish Coca-Cola bottlers that merged operations two weeks ago with approval from Spain's National Competition Commission and the Portuguese Competition Authority.
The Coca-Cola Company chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent, along with Coca-Cola Iberian Partners chair Sol Daurella and Coca-Cola Iberia president Marcos de Quinto, has signed the agreement recently in Madrid.
The merger of the seven bottling operations is aimed at unifying the activities of seven companies with different territorial scopes and to simplify the shareholder system.
Kent said that with this single unified bottling partner, Coke can meet the needs of its retail and restaurant customers.
"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," Kent added.
With this agreement, both companies will form a strategic foundation for the next decade creating an opportunity for Coke's growth in Europe.
de Quinto said, "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."
