Doehler and Ixora’s global partnership is committed to transforming natural taste modulation, broadening Doehler’s capabilities in natural ingredients and integrated solutions, further complemented by an upcoming cutting-edge hub in North Brunswick to accelerate agile flavour innovation and meet the needs of US customers.
Doehler, the global food and beverage ingredient company, has announced a strategic partnership with Ixora Scientific to discover and commercialise natural taste modulators derived from botanicals and cooperate around natural ingredients systems and integrated solutions for the global food and beverage industry.
Ixora Scientific is a San Diego-based start-up focusing on the research and development of novel taste modulators. With a fast-forward approach, within 18 months the Ixora team has developed a strong pipeline of modulators, using plants as starting material. The product portfolio is composed of a sweet taste modulator that strengthens sweet taste intensity, delivering sugar mouthfeel and early onset; outstanding maskers for astringent, bitter, sour, and plant protein off-tastes; and boosters for creaminess, alcohol spiciness, carbonation perception, and vanilla profile. The company is currently focusing on patent applications and regulatory approval.
As part of its commitment to innovation, health wellness, and sustainability, Doehler has established a long-term strategic partnership with Ixora, which will act as its research discovery partner for the next generation of taste modulators. Doehler brings its over 185 years of experience in the ingredients industry and its well-established thought leadership in the German and European flavours market to the US with a modern and visionary approach.
To further extend this partnership, Doehler will soon be inaugurating a technological and cutting-edge new office and lab customer facility in North Brunswick, acting as the Ixora east coast collaboratory hub and focusing on the development and validation of thousand product applications. Dedicated and experienced flavourists will be on hand to help scale up Ixora solutions and work as experts in flavour forensics. The North Brunswick hub will add to the other Doehler locations in the US, Pine Brook (NJ), Cartersville (GA), Chicago (IL), and Los Angeles (CA).
Keurig Dr Pepper announced a strategic partnership with Red Bull, the iconic global energy brand, to sell and distribute Red Bull in Mexico, further leveraging and expanding KDP’s successful partner network strategy.
The sales and distribution partnership provides KDP with exclusive rights to distribute Red Bull Energy Drink products across independent retailers such as grocery, convenience, pharmacy and kiosks, as well as the wholesale, regional key account and on-premise channels in the country, with some exclusions. The partnership also provides the company with the option to distribute future ready-to-drink (RTD) beverage products that Red Bull may launch in Mexico in these locations.
Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
The aim of the collaboration is to leverage holistic supply chain solutions and provide supply chain participants with valid data.
Due to increasing regulatory requirements and consumer demands, transparent supply networks are essential. These developments are expected to accelerate, at the latest starting on January 1, 2023, when Germany’s new Supply Chain Due Diligence Act (LkSG) enters into force. Internationally, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and the resulting internationally recognized standards also highlight the need for transparency in global supply networks. All existing and new processes supporting greater transparency require cooperation and a high degree of data integrity.
In an effort to address regulatory and individual company challenges and to offer corresponding solutions, GS1 Germany, together with its subsidiary F-Trace, will work closely with the certification organizations GLOBALG.A.P. and International Featured Standard (IFS). The aim of the strategic cooperation is to ensure transparency along entire supply chains and thus to efficiently fulfill the legislative requirements in the area of Environmental Social Governance (ESG).
Thomas Fell, Lead GS1 Germany, is convinced: “For the multitude of challenges regarding supply chain transparency, collaborative approaches and globally valid standards are the key. This cooperation brings us a big step closer to our goal of achieving the highest level of data quality and data integrity for our community.”
Stephan Tromp, Managing Director of IFS, adds: “Collaboration is essential for transparent supply chains. It is critical in meeting the growing demands of consumers and politics in the area of ESG. Together with F-Trace, GLOBALG.A.P. and GS1 Germany, we want to offer viable one-stop solutions for optimal supply chain management.”
To this end, the cooperation partners combine, among other things, established standards from the consumer goods industry and GS1 in the community platform “ftrace transparency”. This enables them to provide consistently valid data for all participants in their complex supply networks. Especially since GLOBALG.A.P. and IFS have already certified over 250,000 companies worldwide. Within the framework of the cooperation, from now on – by means of internationally recognized standards – the certified market participants can be optimally linked with each other.
Kristian Möller, Managing Director of GLOBALG.A.P., says: “We welcome F-Trace’s initiative to offer this highly needed transparency platform. Now we can recommend all our global certificate holders the early opportunity to connect and share their ESG compliance on a community driven IT infrastructure that is truly governed by the sector itself.”
Mark Zeller, Lead F-Trace, summarizes: “Together with the know-how of GLOBALG.A.P., GS1 Germany and IFS, we are able to check all data fed into ftrace transparency as well as certificates used for their authenticity and correctness. In addition, we remain open to further social and ecological minimum standards that are brought to us from the community.”
The cooperation enables transparency data to be used in near real time as part of a standardized and decentralized approach. In this way, F-Trace, GLOBALG.A.P., GS1 Germany and IFS meet all supply chain participants’ and market requirements – regardless of industry, company size and IT maturity.
Company to establish new operating units and global beverage category leads, supported by new platform services organization
Workforce to be aligned to focus on growth; reductions expected through voluntary and involuntary separation program
The Coca-Cola Company announced strategic steps to reorganize and better enable the Coca-Cola system to pursue its Beverages for Life strategy, with a portfolio of drinks that are positioned to capture growth in a fast-changing marketplace.
The company is building a networked global organization, combining the power of scale with the deep knowledge required to win locally. The company will create new operating units focused on regional and local execution that will work closely with five marketing category leadership teams that span the globe to rapidly scale ideas.
This structure will be supported by the company’s newly created Platform Services organization, which will provide global services and enhanced expertise across a range of critical capabilities.
“We have been on a multi-year journey to transform our organization,” said Chairman and CEO James Quincey. “The changes in our operating model will shift our marketing to drive more growth and put execution closer to customers and consumers while prioritizing a portfolio of strong brands and a disciplined innovation framework. As we implement these changes, we’re continuing to evolve our organization, which will include significant changes in the structure of our workforce.”
Operating units
The company’s nine new operating units will help streamline the organization by replacing current business units and groups. The operating units will be highly interconnected, with more consistency in structure and a focus on eliminating duplication of resources and scaling new products more quickly.
The company’s current model includes 17 business units that sit under four geographical segments, plus Global Ventures and Bottling Investments. Moving forward, the operational side of the business will consist of nine operating units that will sit under four geographical segments, along with Global Ventures and Bottling Investments.
The company’s operating leaders will report to President and Chief Operating Officer Brian Smith.
Global category leads
Innovation, marketing efficiency and effectiveness are top priorities for the company. The Coca-Cola Company is conducting a portfolio rationalization process that will lead to a tailored collection of global, regional and local brands with the potential for greater growth. To drive these initiatives and support the operating units, the company is reinforcing and deepening its leadership in five global categories with the strongest consumer opportunities:
- Coca-Cola
- Sparkling Flavors
- Hydration, Sports, Coffee and Tea
- Nutrition, Juice, Milk and Plant
- Emerging Categories
The leaders of these categories will work across the networked organization to build the company’s brand portfolio and win in the marketplace. Global category leads will report to Chief Marketing Officer Manolo Arroyo.
Platform Services
The company announced the creation of Platform Services, an organization that will work in service of operating units, categories and functions to create efficiencies and deliver capabilities at scale across the globe. This will include data management, consumer analytics, digital commerce and social/digital hubs.
Platform Services is designed to improve and scale functional expertise and provide consistent service, including for governance and transactional work. This will eliminate duplication of efforts across the company and is built to work in partnership with bottlers.
Platform Services will be led by Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Integrated Services Officer Barry Simpson.
Aligning the company’s workforce to new priorities
The company’s structural changes will result in the reallocation of some people and resources, which will include voluntary and involuntary reductions in employees. The company is working on this next stage of design and will share more information in the future.
In order to minimize the impact from these structural changes, the company today announced a voluntary separation program that will give employees the option of taking a separation package, if eligible.
The program will provide enhanced benefits and will first be offered to approximately 4,000 employees in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico who have a most-recent hire date on or before Sept. 1, 2017. A similar program will be offered in many countries internationally. The voluntary program is expected to reduce the number of involuntary separations.
The company’s overall global severance programs are expected to incur expenses ranging from approximately $350 million to $550 million.
Refresco has reached a strategic agreement with PepsiCo for the production of part of the PepsiCo beverages volume in Spain effective 1 November 2019.
Refresco and PepsiCo are already partners in other European markets, including France, Belgium, Germany, and in the USA.
The agreement also involves the transfer of two of the three factories PepsiCo currently has in Spain: Tafalla (Navarra) and Seville. Both in a geographical and technological way, these production locations complement the current Refresco plants in Spain and provide Refresco with extra capacity for its growth in Spain.
PepsiCo will have a mixed supply model in Spain, since its third plant located in Echávarri Viña (Alava), which is also dedicated to the production of carbonated beverages, will continue to be a part of PepsiCo’s operations, serving both Spain and other European markets thanks to its strategic location.
Victor Perez, PepsiCo’s South West Europe Supply Chain Director, notes, “This new mixed supply model is key to our sustainable growth in the Spanish market. Refresco is a natural partner for PepsiCo as we successfully work together in other markets maintaining our high standards of quality and service”.
As Hans Roelofs, CEO Refresco Group, explains: ”This agreement is a very good extension of our relationship with one of our key customers, PepsiCo. It also confirms our business model in Spain, serving retailers and contract manufacturing customers”.
Doehler Group and Nutrafood S.r.l. have reached an agreement on a strategic partnership.
This transaction further complements Doehler’s range in the area of plant-based food and beverages, where the company currently provides its customers with solutions from smoothies to spoonables to beverages which enable the development of natural nutrition concepts that provide Multi-Sensory Experiences®. The portfolio of pulses, cereal bases and low-calorie bases, such as veggie NFCs, coconut water etc., is now supplemented by nut products. Nutrafood’s extensive expertise and ability to provide plant-based ingredients for food and beverages, combined with the broad product portfolio and the comprehensive industry knowledge of the Doehler Group, will create unique synergy effects. Customers will be able to benefit from a more complete product range and improved efficiency of the two businesses in a global market with regard to customised all-in-one solutions.
Doehler Group and Nutrafood are convinced that this step is a milestone on the path towards a leading position in the plant-based nutrition segment, while simultaneously strengthening their respective positions.
Nutrafood will continue and enhance its core business of plant-based foods and beverages. Both companies will join forces to drive innovative products and solutions that are in line with current consumer trends.
