The Coca-Cola Company has said that it was laying off 2,200 workers, or 17 per cent of its global workforce, as part of a larger restructuring aimed at paring down its business units and brands.
The Atlanta-based company said on Thursday that around half of the layoffs will occur in the US, where Coke employs around 10,400 people. Coke employed 86,200 people worldwide at the end of 2019. The coronavirus pandemic has hammered Coke’s business, as sales from closures of bars, restaurants and cinemas where it normally sells heavily and at places like stadiums and movie theaters dried up due to lockdowns, its revenue fell 9 per cent to USD 8.7 billion in the July-September period. The downturn forced the company to accelerate a restructuring that was already underway. Coke is reducing its brands by half to 200. It shed multiple slow-selling brands this year, including Tab, Zico coconut water, Diet Coke Fiesty Cherry and Odwalla juices.
The company said it will use the savings to invest in growing brands like Minute Maid and Simply juices and fund the launch of new products like Topo Chico Hard Seltzer, Coca-Cola Energy and Aha sparkling water. Coke is also reducing its business segments from 17 to 9. It said the severance programmes will cost between USD 350 million to USD 550 million. The company began offering voluntary buyouts to employees in August. Coke wouldn’t disclose how many employees took those offers. Earlier, the company offered voluntary redundancy to 4,000 workers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico and were also signalled about other layoffs that were likely to follow.
