Coca-Cola to Discontinue Juice Brand Odwalla

Coca-Cola is closing its juice and fruit smoothie brand Odwalla, citing changing client tastes.

In a assertion to CNN Organization, the president of Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid company device, John Hackett, said “every effort” was manufactured to aid continued creation. “This selection was not manufactured flippantly,” he said.

The closure will be finished by the conclude of the month. It will also entail 300 position cuts.

A spokesperson for the corporation said the transfer was not immediately relevant to the COVID-19 disaster but that health-mindful customers had been less intrigued in smoothies than they utilised to be.

Coca-Cola “couldn’t make it do the job, we couldn’t figure out the cost-usefulness of it,” the spokesperson said. “It definitely is the result of customers changing what they want so fast. By releasing up all those assets, we can reinvest all those fees in what customers want these days.”

Coca-Cola is also discontinuing its fleet of 230 refrigerated shipping trucks utilised by Odwalla as perfectly as its Fairlife and Simply models, whose distribution will be redirected.

Coca-Cola obtained Odwalla in Oct 2001 for $181 million as component of a push into the non-carbonated premium drink sector. Having said that, gross sales of juice beverages have fallen amid to fears their sugar content material is linked to coronary heart sickness and obesity.

In 2015, Coca-Cola introduced new fifteen.2-ounce bottles manufactured from apparent PET as the attractiveness of cold-pressed beverages was mounting. It also supplied kombucha mix and zero sugar strains to update the brand.

U.S. customers drank 5.2 gallons of fruit juice for every capita in 2017, the least expensive degree given that the USDA began recordkeeping in 1970.

“We’re targeted on maximizing process efficiency by ruthlessly prioritizing to provide on main [products and solutions] and critical models,” chief executive officer James Quincey said in an earnings get in touch with in April. “The less complexity there is in [the supply chain], the higher the prospect for accomplishment.”

Coca-Cola, James Quincey, Odwalla