Coca-Cola reveals future vision for Soft Drinks

Coca-Cola has launched a report which identifies a £1.4bn growth opportunity for soft drinks within the next five years.

The findings stem from its report, launched this week, entitled "Open More Business", which is the result of a £2m research programme over the last three years.

The opportunity, which can be found in all channels including the on and off-trades, can be identified when Great Britain is compared with neighbouring countries such as Ireland, Belgium and Norway, which have a higher per capita level of soft drinks consumption.

"Great Britain is 37th in the World in terms of its per capita consumption of soft drinks," explained CCE managing director Simon Baldry.

"There are countries with similar climates which have higher consumption rates because of the way suppliers have marketed the business."

The company also launched its Collaboration Learning and Insights Centre (CLIC) this week, which uses virtual store technology to analyse merchandising solutions across all channels.

"It allows us to test a much wider variety of layouts and understand different relationships between a pub and a supermarket for example," said Baldry. "We can look at our virtual pub decked out in different ways and get insight from this."

For the on-trade Baldry said the technology would help to develop a better awareness for soft drinks in outlets by enhancing areas such as menu illustration and behind the bar displays. It could also help the on-trade to explore new avenues.

"We could look at instant access to chilled soft drinks like in a convenience store to see if this could work in a pub," he said.

"There's not been much innovation in the way a product is displayed in a pub but we can test this out with our new technology. It could help to raise dwell time and expenditure."