As Australia's leading health organisations continue to target the soft drink industry, Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) has revealed that its sugar-free and low-sugar drinks are outpacing volume growth for its drinks containing more sugar.
"Low- and no-sugar beverages continue to be a high growth path of our portfolio, growing at over three times the rate of sugar beverages in 2012," said Warwick White, CCA's managing director of Australasia during a market briefing on CCA's annual financial results.
"In Australia, we have more than 250 low- and no-sugar SKUs, representing over one-third of our volume,” White said. "We have been investing ahead of the curve in those [low- and no-sugar] products for the last decade and accelerating that in 2012," he said.
White said sales volumes of Coke Zero had grown by 12 per cent in 2012.
"Diet Coke and Coke Zero now represent close to a third of Coke volumes, a near doubling of non-sugar share since the launch of Coke Zero in 2006," he said.
Lightly sparkling water under the Mount Franklin brand has grown volumes by more than 50 per cent, driven by the Cozi range of drinks promoted by model Jennifer Hawkins. White also said demand for portion control packs was growing by 30 per cent per annum.
Despite a lot of negative media coverage, blaming soft drink consumption for Australia's obesity and weight problems, Coca-Cola appears keen to show it's addressing these issues.
Last month, Coca-Cola launched a global ad campaign, urging people to come together to deal with the obesity crisis.
The ad claims that across Coca-Cola's portfolio of beverages it has no or low-calorie versions of most of its full-calorie drinks. Additionally, it claims it now has smaller portion-controlled sizes for its most popular drinks and has added the calorie content to the front of all its beverage containers to help consumers make informed decisions.
The roll out of the ad coincided with the launch of the Rethink Sugary Drink campaign by the Cancer Council, the Heart Foundation and Diabetes Australia, which claims that a 600 ml regular soft drink contains an averages of 16 packs of sugar.
The leading health organisations also called on the government to consider a soda tax, along the same lines as ones introduced in France and Hungary. Following the launch of a soda tax in France at the beginning of the year, Coca-Cola has suspended a 17 million euro investment in one of its plants in the south of France.
White stressed that he didn't think it was right to label some products good and some products bad, because “quite often there's a lot of greyness in that”. He said it was a matter of educating consumers to make better choices.
"From a community standpoint, we are going to be continuing to work, not only by ourselves but with the industry, to educate consumers about what calorie intake they should have and what is in products.
"We're going to be going after that and focusing on that more on 2013."
