Big Day For ABARTA Coca-Cola

http://www.coca-colacompany.com/press-center/press-releases/the-coca-cola-company-announces-plans-to-significantly-accelerate-bottler-refranchising/

The Coca-Cola Company Announces Plans to Significantly Accelerate Bottler Refranchising

By: The Coca-Cola Company | Feb 9, 2016

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All Remaining North American Territories Will Be Refranchised By End of 2017, Three Years Earlier Than Previously Expected

Plans Include the Sale of 39 Remaining North America Cold-Fill Production Facilities; Latest Agreements Include Letters of Intent for Territories in Five States

Company Announces Non-Binding Letter of Intent to Refranchise Company-Owned Bottling Operations in China

ATLANTA, Feb. 9, 2016 – The Coca-Cola Company today announced that it is accelerating the pace and scale of its bottler refranchising efforts with plans to refranchise 100% of Company-owned North America bottling territories by the end of 2017, including all cold-fill production facilities. The Company has also entered into a non-binding letter of intent to refranchise Company-owned bottling operations in China to existing partners China Foods Limited, part of COFCO Limited, and Swire Beverage Holdings Limited, building on other recent global refranchising initiatives in Europe and Africa.

The Company’s progress and success in transitioning bottling territories to date has provided the confidence to increase the pace of transition.

“We have made significant progress on our North American refranchising initiatives,” said Muhtar Kent, Chairman and CEO, The Coca-Cola Company. “We continue to negotiate additional agreements and we are in constant discussion with potential partners who are excited about investing in the future of the Coca-Cola system in our flagship market as well as in other markets around the world.”

Added Kent: “The acceleration of our global refranchising marks a step change in our efforts to refocus The Coca-Cola Company on its core business of building strong, valuable brands and leading a system of strong bottling partners.”

The franchise system is a cornerstone of the Company’s 21st Century Beverage Partnership Model in North America, a broad initiative aimed at building on system capabilities to sustain success. The first letters of intent in the refranchising process were announced in 2013.

“This has been an important, strategic process that positions the Coca-Cola system in its flagship market for a great future,” said J. Alexander “Sandy” Douglas Jr., President,

Coca-Cola North America. “The North American market presents an opportunity to blend the strengths of a locally focused franchise bottling system with national production efficiencies and large customer account management.”

So far, the Company has reached definitive agreements or signed letters of intent to refranchise territories that account for more than 40% of bottler-delivered distribution volume in the United States. The Company’s Coca-Cola Refreshments unit continues to operate Company-owned territories in North America and will work to ensure a smooth transition to aligned, new and existing bottling partners going forward.

As part of this accelerated refranchising effort, the Company now plans to sell the remainder of its Company-owned cold-fill production facilities by the end of 2017. These facilities produce sparkling beverages, such as Coca-Cola trademark brands and Sprite, along with still brands such as Dasani. The Company expects to maintain ownership of its hot-fill facilities, which produce brands such as Powerade and Minute Maid juices. Company-owned hot-fill operations will supply the entire North America Coca-Cola system.

Today, the Company announced several deals that represent additional progress in the overall North America refranchising process.

New letters of intent provide that:

•    Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, based in Charlotte, N.C., will assume additional territory in portions of Ohio and West Virginia, along with a production facility in Twinsburg, Ohio.

•    Coca-Cola Bottling Company of Roseburg, based in Roseburg, Ore., will assume territory in the Pacific Northwest, primarily in southern Oregon and a small portion of northern California.

•    ABARTA, Inc., based in Pittsburgh, will assume territory in Pennsylvania.

The letters of intent announced today are subject to the parties reaching definitive agreements. Financial terms are not being disclosed.

The Company has also closed its previously announced Definitive Agreement with Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated and successfully transitioned additional territory in Maryland and Virginia, along with a production facility in Sandston, Va.

International Refranchising
Today, the Company is also announcing that it has entered into a non-binding letter of intent to refranchise Company-owned bottling operations in China to existing partners China Foods Limited, part of COFCO Limited, and Swire Beverage Holdings Limited.

Coca-Cola’s third-largest market by volume, China represents a significant long-term growth opportunity for The Coca-Cola Company and its bottling system. The system recently opened its 45th local plant and is currently investing $4 billion in China for future growth, building on $9 billion of investments made in the market since 1979.

Elsewhere, the Company is also focused on refranchising in markets such as Europe and Africa. This includes the planned creation of Coca-Cola European Partners in Western Europe and Coca-Cola Beverages Africa in Southern and Eastern Africa.

History of North America Refranchising
North America is Coca-Cola’s oldest and largest market in the world. Historically, the Coca-Cola system in the United States and Canada was comprised of a significant number of small, local bottlers. Through decades of consolidation, the system evolved to be comprised of a much smaller number of bottlers. By the early 2000s, the majority of North American bottling territories were owned by Coca-Cola Enterprises.

A decade ago, The Coca-Cola Company began working with its bottling partners on plans to develop a model that would evolve the way the system serves a changing customer and consumer landscape, with a focus on creating stronger system alignment. A critical step was the Company’s acquisition of the North American territories of Coca-Cola Enterprises in 2010.

In the five years since the deal was closed, The Coca-Cola Company has accelerated the implementation of the new model by strategically addressing the franchise system, customer service, product supply and a common information technology platform.

Ultimately, the Coca-Cola system in North America will be comprised of economically aligned bottling partners that have the capability to serve major customers, coupled with the ability to maintain strong, local ties across diverse markets in the United States and Canada.

The system also includes a new structure for production of finished beverages, with cold-fill production being owned by select, regional producing bottlers and hot-fill and syrup production remaining under ownership of Coca-Cola North America. The National Product Supply Group, or NPSG, which has a board comprised of representatives from Coca-Cola North America, Coca-Cola Refreshments, Coca-Cola Bottling Co. Consolidated, Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED and Swire Coca-Cola USA, will administer key activities for NPSG-member bottlers. The board currently represents approximately 95% of U.S.-produced volume.

Great Quote

The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change; the signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

Jim Collins, Great By Choice

Coca-Cola Park Contract Extended

New deal goes to 2027:

http://www.wfmz.com/news/news-regional-lehighvalley/stadiums-name-will-be-cocacola-park-through-2027/31571238

New Book By Director Bill Goodspeed

He claims it will make you laugh out loud...

http://www.amazon.com/Buzz-Kill-William-Goodspeed/dp/1452598681/ref=cm_sw_em_r_dpcod_pvuUub1QD7M49_lm

Bill Holtz Promoted

I am pleased to announce that effective February 1, 2015, Bill Holtz has been promoted to the newly created position of Vice President, Finance and Administration, reporting to me.

Bill joined Buffalo Coca-Cola in 1989 as Financial Manager and in 1994, moved to Pittsburgh to join ABARTA's Finance Group.  He became Treasurer in 2009.

Bill earned his undergraduate degree in accounting from Duquesne University and his MBA from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Bob Kobert, Kathy Fedor, Vince Sinkovich, Ray Stevenson, and Marilee Marcantonio will report to Bill.

Please join me in wishing Bill well in his new position.

Exporting Natural Gas

Exporting natural gas will be good for your country and good for your company:

This is a good way to start: click here

New Policy On Use Of Mobile Devices While Driving

If you would like to know more about why we changed the company policy on the use of mobile devices while driving, check out this website: focusdriven.org

Follow Me On Twitter!

Feel free to follow me on Twitter under the handle @ABARTACEO where I post business articles that I find interesting, and which are relevant to ABARTA’s industries, leadership, management, and values!


-John Bitzer

Hopson's Editorial

From Jim Hopson, Publisher of The Press:

We announced this week that The Press is being sold to BH Media, part of tycoon Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. This sale is good news for The Press, its readers, advertisers and employees, and for the southern New Jersey communities served by The Press.

BH Media is a new company. Its 30 daily newspapers were acquired in the last couple of years. Starting and building BH Media at a time when other owners are leaving the newspaper business, and when many industry observers are questioning the future of the medium, may appear to be a risky venture. But Buffett has confidence in newspapers, like The Press, that provide good local news coverage in healthy markets.

Here is some of what he said about his newspaper investments in his 2013 letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders: "Newspapers continue to reign supreme … in the delivery of local news. If you want to know what's going on in your town - whether the news is about the mayor or taxes or high school football - there is no substitute for a local newspaper that is doing its job. …Wherever there is a pervasive sense of community, a paper that serves the special informational needs of that community will remain indispensable to a significant portion of its residents."

BH Media has quickly earned a reputation as an excellent publisher, employer, business partner and community citizen, and you can expect our new owners to be all of those things here. And it says something great about The Press and this southern New Jersey region that the most successful investor of all time just made a big bet on our future.

We need to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to the Bitzer/Taylor family, who have owned The Press for 62 years. Their thoughtful stewardship of this newspaper is the reason that The Press today remains a strong and independent voice in this region. The people of The Press remember them as kind and generous bosses. I know them to be smart and highly ethical leaders whose principles and business practices should be a model for all business owners.

Another big change for The Press occurred earlier this month when we shut down our production operation and transferred the printing of the newspaper up the Garden State Parkway to the Asbury Park Press. This move reflects an accelerating trend in our industry, where the economics strongly favor consolidating production into fewer, more efficient sites.

We have succeeded in making this change invisible to our readers and advertisers, with a couple of exceptions. First, our color pictures are now sharper and more vivid thanks to the newer and better printing technology in Asbury Park. And to accommodate travel time from our printer back to Pleasantville, we now have earlier deadlines. Because we go to press earlier, some news, notably sports scores, is left out of the print edition.

Deadlines have always been a fact of life in our business. No matter when we started the presses, some news happened too late to include in the paper. For example, we could never get the scores of West Coast night ball games into the paper. But because we have a website that we update continuously, we can make news available to our readers whenever it happens. That is particularly true with sports scores, which feed automatically from our wire service directly onto our website. We update the website as soon as the Associated Press moves the scores. We quickly post other breaking news, too. For example, the verdict in the George Zimmerman trial was announced after our press deadline last weekend, but the website was all over the story the minute we got it. The combination of the print and digital products enables us to give readers more up-to-the-minute news than we ever could with print alone.

Finally, I want to thank The Press' production people, who worked faithfully to serve our readers until the last copy of the final edition left our plant. They richly earned our gratitude and best wishes.

BH Media To Buy The Press

The Press of Atlantic City will be sold to Warren Buffett's BH Media Group

The Press of Atlantic City will be sold to Warren Buffett's BH Media Group by ABARTA, a private holding company based in Pittsburgh, Pa., interim Publisher James W. Hopson announced today.

BH Media Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Company, with headquarters in Omaha, Neb. The group now owns 30 daily and weekly newspapers in 10 states.

The Press of Atlantic City is a 67,000 daily and 77,000 Sunday circulation newspaper that serves Atlantic, Cape May, Cumberland and Ocean counties. The newspaper's Web site, pressofAtlanticCity.com , reaches 700,000 unique visitors each month. The Bitzer/Taylor family, owners of ABARTA, has owned The Press since 1951.

Mark Blum will become publisher of The Press when BH Media takes ownership, expected in August. Blum, who is now publisher of the Morning News in Florence, S.C., was controller for The Press from 1989 to 1993.

"I couldn't be more excited about getting the opportunity to return to Atlantic City and work with such an outstanding team of employees at The Press of Atlantic City," Blum said. "The Press is one of New Jersey's finest newspapers, and its digital presence is dominant. All of us at BH Media are very excited to become associated with a newspaper and a community like The Press and South Jersey," Blum said.

Blum added, "The South Jersey region is a vibrant place to be right now, and we look forward to serving the business community and continuing to be essential to readers. The Press' print and web platforms are excellent, innovative vehicles to do both."

BH Media has been purchasing small- and medium-sized, community-oriented newspapers since December 2011. The home page on its Web site states 'A sense of community. That's what BH Media provides."

"We're delighted to have The Press of Atlantic City join our growing family of newspapers," said Terry Kroeger, CEO of BH Media Group. "We look forward to the opportunity to continue the tradition of community-minded journalism carried on by the Bitzer/Taylor family for over 50 years. We also want to welcome the Atlantic City employees to our company and are looking forward to working with them. We are pleased to have Mark Blum, who has done a great job for us as publisher at the Morning News, take on this new role as publisher of The Press of Atlantic City."

John Bitzer III, president and CEO of ABARTA said, "We are very pleased that BH Media will be the new owner of The Press. Their sterling reputation for journalistic integrity and astute business management should be welcome by the market, and by the people at The Press. The Bitzer/Taylor family is very proud of our long stewardship of The Press, and we wish BH Media every success as we turn the reins over to them."

Hopson said, "BH Media is not only acquiring a fine newspaper franchise, but also a great group of newspaper professionals who have shown a willingness to adapt to the challenges of newspapering in a quickly changing environment. This is a transaction from which the buyer, the seller, the employees and the customers all benefit."

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

ABARTA To Sell The Press

Not An Easy Decision

After long and careful consideration, the senior executive team, with the approval of the board of directors of ABARTA, has decided to put The Press Media Group up for sale.

As most of you know all too well, the newspaper industry is in the midst of a fundamental transformation, and The Press Media Group is no exception.  That transformation has created significant growth constraints for stand-alone, family holding company newspapers like ours, and we have been unable to devise a business strategy to overcome those constraints.  The Press Media Group will be much better served by either being part of a larger group of newspapers that can apply economies of scale and strategic leverage to the business, or by local ownership that can leverage its ties to the community.

We all have mixed feelings and a heavy heart about this decision.  On the one hand, our family has proudly owned and operated The Press Media Group for sixty years.  Four generations of family members have worked in the business over that time, and we have always taken our Fourth Estate responsibilities very seriously.  On the other hand, I am absolutely certain this decision is in the best long-term interests of ABARTA and The Press.

Effective today, Jim Hopson will be the interim publisher and chief operating officer of The Press Media Group, reporting directly to me.  Many of you will remember Jim as the publisher of the Press from 1989 to 1994.  Jim has considerable experience in operating and in selling newspapers.  His role will be threefold: 1) provide leadership for the business, 2) improve its financial performance, and 3) usher it through the sale process.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Keith Dawn for 16 years of significant contributions to The Press.  We wish him well in what I’m sure will be a bright future.