Eastern Europe bolsters CCHBC in 2004

Product volumes across the Greece-based bottling firm's emerging markets, including Russia, Ukraine, the Balkan states and Romania, rose 10 per cent to €580 million to become the company's largest sector after established Western Europe markets stuttered; only growing by two per cent to €563.5 million.

Russia and Romania received special praise for spear-heading the emerging market business with bottled mineral water and cold drinks driving double digit growth in both countries.

This shows the rising importance of non-carbonated soft drinks across the sector, and CCHBC said at the end of last year that "some of the most important initiatives were new water flavours in Russia under the Bonaqua umbrella and flavour extensions of Cappy [juice] in Romania"​.

A report by market analysts Euromonitor​ agreed, saying that the range of flavours and healthier image of juice and bottled water would drive the growth of Russian soft drinks market in the next few years, as "consumers slowly turn away from the over-sweetened and artificially-flavoured carbonated drinks"​.

And, there are signs that health consumers are starting to play an important role across the wider Eastern Europe market after Euromonitor again named bottled water as the most dynamic growth area in the Romanian soft drinks market. Romanians doubled their soft drink consumption between 1998 and 2003 with volumes hitting 1.7 billion litres, and market value is forecast to rise by 24 per cent up to 2008.

CCHBC's parent firm, Coca-Cola, and its rival PepsiCo, both saw sales of their trademark fizzy cola drink slow down throughout 2004, and this has left Coca-Cola struggling to regain its footing at the beginning of 2005.

CCHBC said that "non-carbonated beverages now account for 23 per cent of our total volume as we strive to offer consumers more choice and address health and wellness concerns"​.

Emerging market success has been vital to CCHBC over the past year in order to limit the damage done by what the company described as a one-off restructuring charge mainly in the North and Republic of Ireland, totalling €49 million.

The company's net profits still slipped 3 per cent, to €112 million, during 2004. And a further €15 million charge is expected in 2005, although CCHBC claims its relocations and rationalising will bring in an extra €15-20 million per year after 2007.

Company sales performed well in 2004, rising 4.5 per cent to €4.2 billion, and this has made CCHBC confident for 2005, though it needs to be wary of volume problems.

Volumes in developing markets, covering eight of the 10 new EU members, fell by three per cent. The company blamed the drop on economic challenges resulting from EU accession alongside bad weather and poor tourism. Only Poland and the Czech Republic showed growth; the former benefiting from rising popularity of single-serve packs and Fanta Grape juice.

Unfortunately, the company may also be hindered by the fall-out from a recent settlement with the EU, in which Coca-Cola promised to scrap controversial retail discounts and agreed to share more display space with rivals. Coca-Cola controls almost 50 per cent of the European carbonated soft drinks market.

The agreement is likely to apply in 27 EEA countries and in all channels of distribution where the carbonated soft drinks of Coca-Cola account for over 40 per cent of national sales and twice the nearest competitor's share. It will take more than 12 months to fully implement the undertaking and for the market to react to any resulting changes.

Even so, CCHBC was confident about 2005, saying it was making existing volumes more profitable so as to offset rising costs and that total volumes were expected to grow 6 per cent, up from 4 per cent in 2004.