Coca Cola Factory Tour

      

      My Changing Nature of Business in China class is taught by the past CFO of Coca-Cola China so as a special class trip, we got to go visit the Coca-Cola bottling plant which is on the outskirts of Shanghai. We were brought up to a board room and shown a video of the history of Coca-Cola. Started by a pharmacist in Georgia in 1886 and only sold about 5 glasses a day when it was first sold. Now the product can be found in over 200 countries and has a huge product line!

      We got to first go through the bottling and assembly lines of both Coke and Sprite. They are able to fill about 1,000 bottles every minute from their assembly line! It was crazy to see how quickly the bottles moved from being first washed, then labeled, then filled, and finally sealed and sent off to be packaged. They also showed us about the new packaging system that China is using to be a little more eco-friendly. Instead of using cardboard boxed to package their bottles, they are using plastic wrap and shrink wrapping cases of their beverages which take away much of the waste that cardboard used to account for.

      Afterwards, we went through the factory’s Coca-Cola Museum. They had all of the styles of bottles and cans that Coke has used in the past and even had special bottles designed for Chinese events such as this past summer’s Expo and the Beijing Olympics. They played a wide selection of adds that have run on Chinese television to advertise Coca-Cola products available to the Chinese market. It was interesting to see the similarities (advertising to a younger audience and having the commercial be highly energetic) and the differences (focusing a lot of their adds on romance and falling in love) from Chinese Coke commercials to American coke commercials. The museum displayed the many different products that Coke produced for the Chinese market, many that I have never seen in the states, and now when I look around at the drink selection in stores it is blatant how dominant Coke has been able to become in the Chinese market. Although, there are other brands such a Pepsi, from what I have seen, it looks as though Coke has about 75% of self-space in stores reserved for their products.

      
We got to finish our afternoon at the Coca-Cola Facotry by getting to sample the different drinks. I chose to try a milk like drink with pineapple flavor. In 2008 China was faced with a crisis with the milk that was being sold to its citizens. The chemical melamine was found in the milk prodced by 3 major companies in China and as a result over 6,000 people became sick and experienced kidney failure, a few even died because of this chemical. Due to this milk crisis, the Chinese have been very hesistant to drink milk over the past few years. This Coke product is not pure milk, has a fruity flavor, and also doesn’t require refrigeration (cold drinks are not popular in china, only in the past few years has the idea of chilled beverages began to gain popularity), this makes the product much more desirable to the overall population. The drink fell way beyond my expectations! It was delicious (almost like a less sweet pina colada!) and I’ve bought it a few times already!

      The factory tour and presentation was such a fun opportunity and something so unique to be able to experience while here!