Posts tagged with "Coca-Cola"

Above, the Fairlife product line. (Photo source: Coca-Cola)

Coca-Cola to build $650M Fairlife plant in New York State

May 23, 2023

Coca-Cola has selected New York State as its “preferred location” for a new Fairlife production facility costing an estimated $650 million, Governor Kathy Hochul (D) has announced, reports Food Dive.

The 745,000-square-foot facility—to be located in Webster, New York, a suburb of Rochester—is expected to create up to 250 new jobs. Coca-Cola expects to break ground on the project this fall and to have the facility operational by the fourth quarter of 2025. It will be the largest dairy processing plant in the Northeast.

Fairlife has been a big winner for Coca-Cola recently as the beverage giant evolves into a “total beverage company” and invests in brands that have a long runway for growth. Last year, Coca-Cola said Fairlife topped $1 billion in annual retail sales for the first time.

While Coca-Cola is best known for brands such as Sprite, Dasani and its namesake soda, the Atlanta-based company has moved aggressively to build out a portfolio that is broader and, in many cases, healthier.

During CEO James Quincey’s tenure, Coca-Cola has purchased or acquired the remaining stakes in brands it didn’t already own—including Fairlife, sparkling water offering Topo Chico, and sports drink line BodyArmor.

Coca-Cola acquired the remaining stake of Fairlife, which makes ultra-filtered milk and dairy products, from its joint venture partner Select Milk Producers, a dairy cooperative, in 2020. Coca-Cola previously owned a 42.5% minority stake. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The ultra-filtered milk process removes the lactose and much of the sugar, and leaves behind more of the protein and calcium.

Fairlife, which launched in 2012, started with a high-protein milkshake aimed at athletes and has since expanded into other value-added dairy products, including its popular milk and ice cream.

The brand has grown nearly 30% year to date and currently a quarter of all U.S. households purchase a Fairlife product, Coca-Cola said, citing Nielsen data.

The New York plant would be Fairlife’s third in the United States. Coca-Cola has facilities in Coopersville, Michigan, and Goodyear, Arizona.

“Consumer demand for Fairlife products is at an all-time high, and a new production facility will allow us to significantly increase capacity and deliver fairlife to even more households across the country,” Tim Doelman,Fairlife’s CEO, said in a statement.

He added that as the brand continues its expansion in the Northeast, the New York location’s proximity and access to dairy farmers “make it an excellent location to support our next phase of growth.”

Coca-Cola is the latest large CPG company to build a new plant or expand an existing facility to prepare for an increase in sales of a product. Mondelēz International, Nestlé, J.M. Smucker, and Post Holdings are among the food and beverage to make multi-million-dollar announcements in recent years.

Research contact: @FoodDive

Above, Coca-Cola is updating Coke's look and launching a new Coke with coffee flavor. (Photo source: Coca-Cola)

Coke is giving its cans a makeover

January 20, 2022

Coca-Cola is fighting for your attention. The Atlanta-based company is unveiling a new look for flavored Coke products this month, and it has a new Coke variety coming in a few weeks. It’s part of the company’s renewed focus on its Coke brand, as it dumps niche products and tries to drum up excitement for its core beverages, reports CNN.

In the United States, new versions of Cherry Coke cans and bottles are magenta, with the white Coca-Cola logo emblazoned on the regular version and a black Coca-Cola logo on the Zero Sugar version. The new Vanilla Coke cans and bottles are cream-colored, and the Cherry Vanilla flavor’s new packaging is a mix of the two (heavy on the magenta).

Coke with zero caffeine as well as Coke with zero caffeine and no sugar also have new looks, keeping with these designs.

The company decided in 2020 to cut its portfolio in half, dropping its underperforming brands and focusing on its most powerful ones, like Coke. Now, Coca-Cola is working on refreshing Coke’s look and enticing new customers with new products. The new packages will start to hit shelves in late January.

Updates to the flavored Coke packages are designed to “modernize and simplify the look … [and] help consumers find the flavor they’re looking for on the shelf,” said Natalia Suarez, senior brand manager of Coke Choice Portfolio, the company’s North America operating unit.

The updated cans are supposed to “quickly communicate flavors and clearly distinguish between full-sugar and zero-sugar/calorie-free options,” she added.

The company started overhauling its packaging last year, she noted, when it changed the packaging of Coke, Diet Coke, and Coke Zero Sugar. The company also tweaked the recipe for Coke Zero Sugar in an effort to make the drink taste more like regular Coke.

Grabbing customers’ attention as they walk down the grocery aisle is essential to brands like Coke, which have to make the most out of their shelf space.

“It’s a Darwinian struggle for space in the supermarket or in the convenience store,” Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey told CNN Business last year.

Another way to get people excited about Coke is to expand beyond traditional flavors. So the company is launching a new variety of Coke with Coffee.

About a year ago, the company brought Coke with Coffee — Coke made with coffee powder — to the United States.
“Coca-Cola with Coffee was met with a widespread, enthusiastic consumer response,” when it first started selling in North America, said Brandan Strickland, brand director of Coca-Cola Trademark.

The product already comes in Dark Blend, Vanilla, and Caramel. And now a new Mocha flavor will reach US shelves on February 7. Mocha is the logical next flavor, said Strickland, noting the move was “a no-brainer.”

Coca-Cola also tried to expand beyond cola with its Coke Energy product, which hit North American shelves in early 2020 and was discontinued in the region in the spring. Coca-Cola pulled the product because it wasn’t performing well.

Research contact: @CNN

Futurist Faith Popcorn. (Photo source: BrainReserve)

Ahead of her time? Were Faith Popcorn’s predictions correct for 2018?

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October 3, 2018

She is not a psychic or a fortune-teller. However, “futurist” Faith Popcorn claims that her strategic consultancy, the New York City-based BrainReserve, can tell her corporate clients—with 95% accuracy—what’s ahead in the shifting consumer and cultural landscape. And she has been offering her remarkably accurate insights into impending American lifestyle trends through her TrendBank since 1974.

But just how reliable is Popcorn? In 1986, she told Coca-Cola that bottled water would be the Next Big Thing. A couple of years later, she gave Kodak a heads-up that film was on its last legs.

We took a look at some predictions that Popcorn offered to Advertising Age in January 2018, to see whether she was “on the money” for this year.

Note: Popcorn said her predictions would not reach the mainstream for at least 15-20 years, but that signs would begin emerging during the year ahead.

To begin with, Popcorn painted “ a shockingly bleak view of gender relations in the wake of the sexual harassment scandals” that rocked the corporate and entertainment worlds in 2017: The sexes will be separated, she predicted—at least at work, she told Ad Age.

“I think there will be female-only floors in companies and male-only floors,” she says. “There will be rage rooms where men can act out because they are going to be very angry.”

Second, Popcorn told the trade journal, “digital doctors” will become increasingly popular. A trip to the doctor could soon become obsolete as people increasingly monitor their health via embedded computer chips, swallow-able trackers, and color-changing dots that rest on the skin’s surface, Popcorn predicted.

“Doctors are going to become keyboard technicians, because all the measuring apertures will be in your body,” she says. “You can have a full checkup without even being there.”

Amazon—which is eyeing a move into prescription drug marketing—will play a major role on this new health playing field, she suggested. The company “can control the entire supply chain and tap their deep data insights,” her firm stated in its 2018 predictions presentation.

As for the number-one upcoming health threat, Popcorn predicted that anxiety would be rife nationwide. And, she said, virtual reality will prove to be the most-used stress-relief solution.

Instead of hitting the road for a relaxing vacation, for instance, people will plug into a VR experience. “You don’t really go anywhere,” Popcorn says.

With VR, nothing is out of reach, including a relaxing trip to outer space or a Narnia-like snow voyage, her firm predicts. Brands could get involved by buying ad placements in these virtual weekends away. “It’s a new media,” she said.

On the weather front, Popcorn anticipated that climate change would lead to strict environmental monitoring and extreme survivalist solutions, with shore towns, under threat from rising tides, being replaced by floating cities, according to the predictions presentation.

Finally, back in January, Popcorn forecast, “Your interior life is about to go public,” noting that technology like facial recognition will be used to monitor our moods.

Your escape mechanism? “Private, scan-free get-togethers where people can vent, mourn and rejoice without prying AI eyes” will take hold.

For most of us these predictions may be too close for comfort. Brace yourselves: Popcorn’s 2019 predictions will be out soon.

Research contact: info@faithpopcorn.com

Photo source: Pinterest.de