Boston, MA 10/25/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Recently The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) opened a new bottling plant in China this past week. This is in line with the company’s goal of investing $4 billion in the country over a period of 3 years. The new plant was opened in China’s Hebei province which has a population of about 72 million people. The population in the province which is the sixth largest is what pushed the company to choose the province as its place of choice to open the plant.
Further figures released by the company also showed that the province has been consuming about 2.4 billion servings of Coke products which include Sprite, Fanta and minute maid per year since 2008. Despite the company making an early entrance into the Chinese market around the year 1979, it was only until recently that the company started aggressively making investments in the region. Among the Chinese population the company says that the most popular brand is Sprite with figures of volume sales going up by 9% of all the company’s products. Sparkling beverage sales volumes also went up by 8% in the most recently released earnings.
In US the company also introduced something new. The company introduced a new product called Dasani. Dasani is a sparkling, unsweetened with zero calories, slightly carbonated and infused with natural flavors drink. It comes in flavors like lime, lemon, berry and apple. It also has an unflavored variety.
The Dasani product is set to boost an initiative called ‘Drink Up’ that encourages the citizens of America to drink more water. The initiative is part of the Healthier America partnership that the Vice President of water, tea and coffee for the North America Coca-Cola branch Mary-Ann Somers is part of. Dasani is a delicious, refreshing and healthy beverage that can be consumed on any occasion. The product is expected to be in retail stores come December 2013 with the national launch slated for February 2014.
