Beverage major Coca-Cola Company on Tuesday said that its bottling investment group’s global unit case volume declined by 5 per cent led by India in the first quarter due to the impact of Covid-19.

The bottling investment group represents the company-owned bottling plants network across the globe. In India, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages Ltd is company-owned bottling arm and runs 15 plants.

In India, the beverage major witnessed negative impact on both out-of-home and in-home consumption due to the nation-wide lockdown.

Negative impact

On an investor call, James Quincey, Chairman and CEO, the Coca-Cola Company, said: “In some markets like India, the severity of distancing measures has negatively impacted at-home (consumption) as well — simply due to the significant reduction in shopping trips. At this stage, it is too early to determine at what level at-home trends will stay like that.”

Talking about the overall performance, the company said that with countries adopting increased social distancing norms, it saw significant changes in consumer purchase patterns in March. This includes substantial decline in business coming from away-from-home or out-of home channels.

The company also said it witnessed early pantry loading in certain markets besides sharp increase in e-commerce.

“Given that away-from-home channels represent approximately half of the company’s revenues, the company expects the net effect of these consumer purchase patterns to have a significant impact on second quarter results,” Coca-Cola said in its earning statement.

Talking about the performance in the Asia-Pacific region which includes India, the company said that in the period of the first three months ended March 27, unit case volume declined by 7 per cent, as strong growh in January was more than offset by a decline in China in February and across all key markets in March.

Unit case volume growth is the number of unit case of beverages sold directly or indirectly by the company and its bottling partners.

The beverage major had in India refranchised its bottling operations in the Northern region to its existing franchisee bottling partners in 2019.

Published on April 21, 2020