Global standards followed in RC Cola bottling plants worldwide
MANILA, Philippines - How do global brands like RC Cola keep customers loyal to the product? For many cola drinkers around the world, the answer is simple: make sure that the beverage that they love is easy to find and that it continues to taste as good as it has always tasted. And if the company puts in added value that is relevant to the consumer, buyers will feel greater allegiance to that product.
Enormous are the processes involved in delivering the experience of an international brand like RC Cola to a neighborhood corner store in a country like the Philippines, especially when the market is dominated by other giant brands. But it’s all in a day’s work for RC Cola International, and in the specific case of the Philippine bottlers, those challenges contain the elements of a success story.
Operations head Francis Lamprea exchanged knowledge recently with RC Cola’s biggest bottler in the world, Philippine-based Asiawide Refreshments Corporation (ARC), the company that has helped build RC Cola into the third leading soft-drink brand in the Philippines just seven years after it was re-launched locally in 2003.
From the perspective of manufacture and supply, the task of making the product available to as many people as possible in an archipelago like the Philippines is complex given that distribution systems have to be set up so a bottle of RC Cola can get to the other side — literally. Unlike the United States and other countries with land uninterrupted by seas, allowing the easy and quick movement of goods, working in several smaller islands poses a test of interruption and continuity.
And yet, the Philippine bottler has kept up with the pace of demand by establishing smaller production facilities that are close to the market to reduce the amount of travel, and is very agile to be able to respond to needs in a short period of time.
“All RC Cola bottlers have to meet our standards,” says Lamprea. A commitment to quality is maintained in all of RC Colas bottlers around the world. “Our technical team visits, audits the plant, makes sure that all these plants are compliant with our quality, sanitation, and manufacturing standards.”
While some things do change, RC Cola has kept its refreshing taste — the flavor that wins cola blind taste tests — all these years. The cola concentrates are produced and shipped from a single facility in Columbus, Georgia, in the United States where the company was founded, so the flavor is the same around the world.
“There could be minor variations but they are due to the quality or type of water or sugar that is used,” he says. Here in the Philippines, cane sugar is used, which is considered a “premium sugar” in the industry worldwide. Framing the cola experience in terms of returnable bottles also provides a rich source of insight into contextual realities and brand relevance.
According to Lamprea, the Philippines is one among many countries that still use returnable packaging for economic reasons.
“Delivering the product to the consumer at a competitive price means that you have to use returnable packaging because the consumer is only paying for the contents, not for the packaging.” As the economy or disposable income of people within an area increase, “there’s a natural migration to non-returnable packaging because it delivers a certain degree of convenience that is not necessarily inherent to the returnable package.” That said, he notes that in developed economies like Germany, Norway and Sweden, there’s a movement to returnable packaging as enforced by law due to environmental concerns.
Whether an RC Cola drinker uses a returnable or non-returnable bottle, consumers and non-consumers of the brand will agree that there is a distinguishing quality among RC Cola lovers wherever in the world they live. Lamprea provides a personality portrait of the brand’s customer: “Even if they’re part of the group, they are individuals. In a sense, they’re not followers but leaders. They want to be different. That’s how try to we position RC Cola: we help them to be different by giving them a tool to show their individuality.”
The fact that RC Cola, a century-old global brand, has been warmly embraced by locals who like its taste, value, and spirit so much that they have made it “Ang Cola ng Bayan,” is due to the professionalism and persistence of the Philippine team. ARC has kept the company’s finger on the pulse of its buying public while fostering intimate and expanding ties with partners in the field, and close communication with headquarters.
For accomplishing in just eight years what bottlers in other countries have been trying to achieve for decades, ARC was honored recently in recognition of its exemplary performance.
“ARC’s accomplishment shows that a Filipino organization is as good as any other organization anywhere else in the world. It has been done with Filipino capital, Filipino brains, Filipino work. It is something that every Filipino should be proud of, regardless of the product or brand,” Lamprea concludes.
