Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Tuesday, Nov 19, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Tuesday, Nov 19, 2002 |
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Marketing
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Trends Corporate - Corporate Disputes Cola war over `hoarding' of bottles in AP Our Bureau
HYDERABAD, Nov. 18 THE cola wars in Andhra turf have taken a new, murkier turn. Pepsi and Coca-Cola are embroiled in charges and counter charges of hoarding of bottles. The trigger for the fresh round of controversy is the reports of seizure of lakhs of bottles of Pepsi in godowns of the Coca-Cola plants. Dismissing charges of hoarding, a Coca-Cola spokesperson said Pepsi's allegation were `malafide' and said the company would lodge a complaint with the police that Pepsi was using `poclains' and burying Coke bottles. He said it was only on Thursday that officials of Coca-Cola and Pepsi met in the city and agreed on the exchange of bottles. Why did Pepsi have to complain to police on Saturday, when glass exchange was an established and long-term practise in the soft drink industry the spokesperson said. The police had, on a complaint by Pepsi, raided three bottling plants in and around the city on Saturday and seized lakhs of empty bottles allegedly hoarded by the business rival, Coca-Cola. The raids were carried out at Aminpur, Kulsumpura and Moulali and the estimated number of bottles seized was around 20 lakh. Meanwhile, Pepsi India Ltd in a release through Charminar Bottling Company here said, "the seizure of large number of empty Pepsi bottles during the police raid at the bottling plants and warehouse of Coca-Cola in Hyderabad has vindicated our suspicion that it was Coca-Cola that was lifting our empty bottles" The company said in the process of collecting empty bottles from the market, some bottles of competing brands inadvertently do get picked up. However, the number of such bottles at any given point of time is a few lakh on the outside, which are exchanged in normal course. However, in this case bottles which have been found were in excess of 5 million. This is not an accidental mixing at the time of pick up, he said.
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