Coke To Discuss Price Increase With Bottlers

Coca-Cola India has offered to hold talks with Indian bottlers on January 13 to discuss the proposed hike in prices of soft drink concentrates.

Coke bottlers will call a meeting in the weekend to prepare their agenda ahead of the Monday talks.

It may threaten to close down their bottling operations in case the multinational insists on increasing the concentrate price.

A senior bottler said: Yes, Coke have offered us to meet on January 13.

However, the bottlers have to meet and decided on a plan of action, especially, as some of them have threatened to stop bottling if the decision is forced on them.

The 20 per cent price increase, earlier scheduled to take effect from January 1 this year, was postponed due to opposition from the multinationals franchisee bottling network.

Coca-Cola has invited its domestic bottlers to a meeting with Richard Nicholas, the chief executive of Cokes wholly-owned Indian subsidiary.