The Coca-Cola brand, produced by Coca-Cola HBC Romania, holds a 12% market share by volume. It is followed by mineral water Borsec, held by local producer Romaqua, with 11.1% and by Frutti Fresh, with a 5% share. The total market amounts to 2.8 billion liters.
Market leader Coca-Cola HBC Romania owns three of the top five brands. No.4 and no. 5 in the ranking are mineral water Dorna and soft drink Fanta, with a market share by volume of 4.7% and 4.6% respectively. No brand from the PepsiCo portfolio features among the top five soft drinks brands in Romania.
“We cannot comment on the specific numbers and conclusions of Euromonitor. However, we can confirm that in Romania we have always been leaders in the soft drinks market” says Stephane Batoux, general manager of Coca-Cola Hellenic Romania, a company present in Romania for over 20 years.
12% of a total market of 2.8 billion l of soft drinks means that 335 million liters of Coca-Cola were sold in 2012 in Romania.
At an estimated average price of between 2.5 and 3 lei per liter of Coca-Cola, ZF calculations show that the Coca-Cola brand had sales of around EUR200 million last year, i.e. almost half the sales of the Greek parent company in Romania. Coca-Cola HBC Romania also has brands such as Fanta, Sprite, Burn (energy drink) and Cappy in its portfolio.
Who holds supremacy in the region
The Eastern-European soft drinks market, where consumption amounts to 37.7 billion l, is dominated by Coca-Cola, despite the fact that local brands abound. No. 2 is PepsiCo.
Euromonitor data shows that in Eastern Europe, including in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Ukraine, the Coca-Cola company ranks first in terms of volumes sold.
With a consumption of 43 liters of Coca-Cola’s products per capita, Romania is one of the largest markets in the region for the giant, leaving behind countries like Poland, where consumption of Coca-Cola’s products does not exceed 26 l per capita, and Ukraine, with 11 l per capita, shows a recent ZF analysis based on the latest report of the Greek parent company.
Only Bulgarians and Hungarians consume more Coca-Cola products than Romanians, i.e. 44 and 47 l per capita respectively last year.
The crisis cut sales
The two soft drinks giants Coca-Cola HBC Romania and PepsiCo, present in Romania through bottler Quadrant – Amroq Beverages (QAB), saw their turnovers down by up to 30% between 2008 and 2012, losing a total of around EUR170 million worth of sales, according to ZF calculations based on Finance Ministry data.
With similar decline rates, the top two companies on the soft drinks market kept more or less the same sales gap. Coca-Cola sells around three times more than PepsiCo in Romania.
2012 was the toughest crisis year for PepsiCo in Romania, with the company recording losses for the first time in a decade and a flat turnover in euros, but this was not the case of its main competitor.
In fact Coca-Cola HBC Romania returned to growth after four years of a continued turnover decline. The company ended 2012 with turnover of EUR435 million, up 6% (12% in lei) against 2011 and a net profit of EUR33 million, 8% more than the year before.
(English version by Daniela Stoican)