Coca-Cola sales, down 5% in Q2

The volume of Coca-Cola Hellenic’s sales on the Romanian market dropped by around 5% in the second quarter compared to the corresponding period of last year, according to data included in the producer’s financial report.

The Q2 sales decline was similar with the one the company announced for the first three months of the year, so that the H1 pace could be estimated around the same level, minus 5%, in terms of volume.

Coca-Cola is the biggest player on the domestic market of non-alcoholic drinks, with 550m-euro turnover at the level of last year.

“The drop of volumes sold in Romania and Bulgaria is in the mid single digits in the second quarter, reflecting the impact of economic turmoil and the effect of shrinking consumer spending on soft drinks in the most profitable distribution channels,” reads the Coca-Cola Hellenic report.

The distribution channels hurt by plummeting consumption include restaurants, bars and coffee shops, but also gas stations, a segment for which the distributors’ estimates point to a 7-15% decrease in the first 3 months of 2009, from a year ago.

Coca-Cola’s domestic bottler in 2009 posted its first half-year sales decline on the Romanian market, after having seen growth paces of above 10% in recent years, amid rising consumption.

As the first sales slumps emerged, the company in early 2009 announced it would further restructure some activities, a process it started 2-3 years ago and which has led to around 700 redundancies.

Coca-Cola Hellenic put restructuring charges on the Romanian market at 0.7m euros, a level similar with the one registered by the Polish and Russian subsidiaries.

In Romania, the Coca-Cola bottler holds a market share of around 50% in terms of volume. The company for the first time went beyond the 1 billion-litre threshold in terms of sales in 2007, on a non-alcoholic drink market put at slightly more than two billion litres. Its biggest competitors are Pepsi, Romaqua (producer of the Borsec brand) and European Drinks.