Coca-Cola to cut 1,200 jobs as part of plans to simplify innovation and investment
Coca-Cola has announced that it will cut around 1,200 jobs as it looks to facilitate a more streamlined approach to investments and new product launches.
Coca-Cola will increased its focus on reduced sugar drinks such as Zero Sugar
The plans were revealed by the drinks company’s chief executive, James Quincey, in an investor call today (25 April) for Coca-Cola’s quarterly results announcement.
Quincey said the job axes would reduce complexity, simplify processes and speed up decision-making, ultimately allowing for a “faster and more agile business”.
“We are working through redesigning the organisation to be faster and more agile,” said Quincey. “The necessary changes will be difficult, but it they will enable us to do fewer things better.”
The cuts, which include marketing jobs, are scheduled to take place in the second half of 2017 and into 2018, coinciding with the brand’s plans to restructure the business around five “strategic clusters”.
The shift to what it calls a “category cluster” model is based around five categories- sparkling soft drinks; energy; juice, dairy and plant-based drinks; water, enhanced water and sports drinks; and tea and coffee.
The new structure is intended to ensure the company is more disciplined about its investments and will pave the way for new products, innovation around its recipes to reduce sugar levels and building out its product portfolio in the tea and plant-based drinks categories.
As part of its ongoing transformation to facilitate further growth and accelerate innovation across its brand portfolio, the company also recently created a new role of chief growth officer.
Reduced sugar drinks have emerged as a significant revenue driver for the company with over half of its UK sales coming from no-sugar variants. As part of the emphasis on pushing its zero sugar drink the company announced that it would ditch Coke Life.
The company hopes that the changes will deliver a further $800m in productivity savings, at least half of which is expected to be reinvest into the company.
Quincey’s comments followed on from a quarterly results announcement which showed a net revenue decline of 11% in the first quarter of the 2017, however Quincey maintained that the company was still on track to deliver full year targets.