Coca-Cola to Discontinue Juice Brand Odwalla

Coca-Cola is closing its juice and fruit smoothie brand Odwalla, citing modifying customer tastes.

In a statement to CNN Company, the president of Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid enterprise unit, John Hackett, said “every effort” was manufactured to help continued production. “This selection was not manufactured lightly,” he said.

The closure will be done by the finish of the thirty day period. It will also entail three hundred job cuts.

A spokesperson for the company said the move was not specifically relevant to the COVID-19 disaster but that health-conscious consumers have been a lot less interested in smoothies than they made use of to be.

Coca-Cola “couldn’t make it function, we couldn’t determine out the cost-efficiency of it,” the spokesperson said. “It really is the outcome of consumers modifying what they want so fast. By releasing up those people property, we can reinvest those people prices in what consumers want right now.”

Coca-Cola is also discontinuing its fleet of 230 refrigerated delivery trucks made use of by Odwalla as properly as its Fairlife and Simply models, whose distribution will be redirected.

Coca-Cola acquired Odwalla in October 2001 for $181 million as element of a push into the non-carbonated quality consume industry. Nonetheless, income of juice beverages have fallen amid to problems their sugar material is related to coronary heart disorder and obesity.

In 2015, Coca-Cola introduced new 15.two-ounce bottles manufactured from apparent PET as the attractiveness of chilly-pressed beverages was rising. It also made available kombucha mix and zero sugar strains to update the brand.

U.S. consumers drank 5.two gallons of fruit juice for every capita in 2017, the most affordable amount considering the fact that the USDA began recordkeeping in 1970.

“We’re concentrated on maximizing program effectiveness by ruthlessly prioritizing to supply on main [items] and key models,” chief govt officer James Quincey said in an earnings simply call in April. “The a lot less complexity there is in [the supply chain], the bigger the chance for achievements.”

Coca-Cola, James Quincey, Odwalla