The Coca-Cola Company has given a notice to terminate its agreements with Delta Beverages, as the effects of SABMiller’s acquisition by AB InBev begin to be felt on the local market.
The world’s top brewer, AB Inbev, is a bottler of Pepsi products and this could have led The Coca Cola to terminate its bottler agreement with Delta Corporation, as there is an obvious conflict of interest.
Early this month, Delta shareholder, SabMiller combined with AB InBev, making Delta an associate of AB Inbev.
In an interview on Friday, Delta’s company secretary, Alex Makamure said, at this stage the company’s relationship with Coca-Cola was unclear, as they do not whether the beverage maker would want to remain in Zimbabwe, but is optimistic it would.
“It’s an issue of who their partners would be. The issue is InBev is also a bottler of Pepsi in some markets, so now the situation is they will have both Coca-Cola and Pepsi competing products,” he explained.
“That is the real issue between the two companies. The company has to decide which way to go, so that is the discussion. At our level, there are no issues, we have a good working relationship with Coca-Cola.”
