We are in for interesting times in the Nigerian soft drinks market. Seven-Up Bottling Company, the bottlers of the famed Pepsi-Cola brand in Nigeria has just launched a 60cl bottle for Pepsi and other brands in its stable, including Mirinda, 7-Up and Teem, in what may seem like the opening salvo to a possible cola war.
Pepsi’s new 60cl bottle is a direct challenge to the new entrant in the Nigerian soft drinks market, BIG Cola from AJEAST Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of AJE Group of Peru.
AB InBev formally agreed to buy its smaller rival, SABMiller on 11th November, in a $108bn mega deal that would see it control 30 percent of global beer volumes.
While the brewer works out the finer details before the deal can be finalized, such as regulatory issues in some markets, there is the issue of how to resolve the ownership of their soft drinks assets. While both companies are known for their beer brands, they also bottle soft drinks in some key markets to complement their products.
AJEAST Nigeria Limited, a subsidiary of AJE Group, a Peruvian soft drink producer, with footprints in 20 countries and last year, was ranked 21 of all soft drink makers globally by Euromonitor, with sales of about $2bn, made its debut in Nigerian in October.
At the launch of the BIG Cola brand and its variants (Cola, Lemon, and Orange) at their production facility in Agbara Industrial Estate, Mr. Theo Williams, Country Manager for AJE said, “The focus is about consumers, AJE in Nigeria is to offer BIG for everybody, we are giving more for less. We want to ensure that consumers get something affordable that they can share with families and friends.
Seven-Up Bottling Plc’s year end results shows the company’s aggressive market penetration across various product lines as profit nudged up to 10.64 percent despite a hard biting economic environment that has seen stunted growth in consumer product firms in the country.
The company declared a profit of N7.12 billion for the year ended March 2015, compared with N6.43 billion, a year ago. Sales were up by 5.93 percent to N82.45 billion.
The growth in sales was attributed to the company’s aggressive penetration in the rural areas than urban Nigeria. This gave the company higher market leverage than newer fringe players competing with the products in the cities.
