Packaging, serving sizes and health consciousness will be the key to profit growth for Coca-Cola Amatil according to its CEO Alison Watkins.
Speaking at the company’s Annual General Meeting yesterday Ms Watkins said she was confident that they would be returning to a growth state over the next years with a number of innovations addressing consumer wants.
In her speech she noted that the company has already had success from recently launching oke Life’ in Australia, a version of Coca-Cola which is naturally sweetened and has less calories.
“We’re currently tracking above target with Coke Life. It’s our second most brought pack in 1.25L and 250mL packs sizes and has gained a 13% share of the Sugar Cola segment,”said Ms Watkins.
Longer term, our expectations would be for Coke Life to represent 1-2% of total brand coke volumes, which is about the levels achieved in the UK market.”
Ms Watkins also spoke about the success they had introducing smaller 250mL single-servings over summer packaged in a number of colours.
“Colours and proportion size may seem like a simple thing but it’s led to an increase in the number of consumers coming back into the franchise, with an improvement in particular in teen consumers who have drunk Coke in the past four weeks,” said Ms Watkins.
Coca-Cola Amatil is hoping consumers will keep up their interest in packaging later this year as they believe a marketing campaign focused on the 100th birthday celebration of Coke’s contour bottle will help boost profits.
Chairman David Gonski addressed the company’s profits saying that over $100 million dollars in cost saving measures will occur over the next three years. A focus will also be made on Indonesia and taking advantage of their growing middle class.
In February shareholders approved a proposal which has resulted in an equity injection of US$500 million from The Coca-Cola Company in our Indonesian operations,” Mr Gonski said.
These funds will support up-weighted investment in our production, warehousing and cold-drink infrastructure over the next three to four years.”
Coca-Cola Amatil reported a net profit after tax of $375.5 million before significant items, a decline of 25.3% in comparison to 2013 results.
