Coca-Cola remains the leader in sales among sodas in Russia

A year after the decision of the American The Coca-Cola Company to suspend operations in RUSSIA, its branded soda is still in the top purchases among Russian cola consumers.Imported Coca-Cola accounts for about 14% of sales

Soda under the Coca-Cola brand remains one of the leaders in sales among cola-flavored drinks in chain and non-chain retail, despite the suspension of production in Russia. This follows from the data of the Sales.rf service available to RBC (it works in partnership with the fiscal data operator First OFD, which is part of the VTB group) and the Evotor IT company.

In January and February 2023, more than a third of cola consumers, whose purchases were evaluated by Prodazhi.rf analysts, chose Dobry Cola in stores (it is produced by Multon Partners' Russian factories, which belonged to the bottler of the original drink, Coca-Cola HBC Russia "). In second place in popularity was the Coca-Cola brand of imported Coca-Cola Company, which left Russia, but its share in sales compared to 2022 fell by more than three times, to 14.1%. Closed the top three drinks under the brand "Chernogolovka". The cola produced by PepsiCo also remained in the top ten most popular (it was the sixth in sales with a share of 3.7%).

A year ago, international brands Coca-Cola and Pepsi were the absolute leaders in sales in the category of drinks with a cola flavor: they accounted for 47.8 and 44.4% of sales in units, respectively. Of the other brands, only the Fresh Bar brand (produced by the Russian division of the Swiss company Global Functional Drinks) occupied a significant market share, while the share of other market participants was less than 1% (the top five included the Vips brand produced in Chelyabinsk and the Belarusian Bela-Cola) .

As considered

Prodazhi.rf analysts assessed consumer preferences based on purchases made at comparable stores in January and February 2022–2023. The study involved chain retail outlets, supermarkets, convenience stores, gas stations, etc., where soda is sold - a total of 27 thousand outlets across the country that also operated in January-February 2022. The data covers purchases in large retail chains, but does not include the stores of the two largest retailers in terms of turnover - X5 Group (Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, Chizhik) and Magnit.

The data that the soda of American companies that have left Russia still occupies a prominent place on the shelf of Russian stores is also confirmed by the statistics of the fiscal data operator Evotor, which tracks purchases in non-chain retail. According to him, in January 2023, imported Coca-Cola ranked first not only in the cola category, but also among all sweet carbonated drinks - it accounted for 32% of sales in monetary terms (a year ago, Russian bottling Coca-Cola accounted for 60 %). PepsiCo drinks imported from abroad are in fourth place (9% of sales in monetary terms), Dobry Cola (26%) and Chernogolovka (12%) are in the top three in terms of sales in rubles.

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The assortment of Magnit does not include imported Coca-Cola, and the soda of the original brand produced in Russia has not been sold since the fall of 2022, a representative of the distribution network specified to RBC. In 2023, the Dobry Cola, Cool-Cola, Chernogolovka and Fresh Bar brands were the leaders in sales in the category of sweet carbonated drinks, the press service of Magnit indicated. A year ago, the absolute leaders were Coca-Cola and Pepsi, the top five also included Fresh Bar and a cola-flavored drink from the Chelyabinsk company Niagara.

At Azbuka Vkusa, the range of cola-flavored carbonated drinks has not changed compared to 2022 - imported Coca-Cola, as well as Dr. Pepper and San Pellegrino drinks, have remained in the top 10, the company specified.

RBC sent inquiries to X5 Group (Pyaterochka, Perekrestok, Chizhik), Verny, Lenta, Metro Cash&Carry, Auchan, as well as The Coca-Cola Company, Coca-Cola HBC and PepsiCo.

How Coca-Cola left Russia and how it was replaced

In March 2022, the world's largest producers of carbonated drinks The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo decided to suspend work in Russia amid the start of a special military operation in Ukraine. Russian factories that produced Coca-Cola drinks stopped receiving the syrup necessary for the production of branded soda back in March. In August, the bottler warned that once stocks of the beverages were depleted, Coca-Cola HBC would no longer produce and sell them in Russia, but would instead focus on local juice brands such as Dobry, Rich, Moya Semya. At the end of July, the Russian division of Coca-Cola (Coca-Cola HBC Eurasia LLC) changed its name to Multon Partners LLC, and then launched the production of an analogue of Coca-Cola - Dobry Cola. PepsiCo also stopped production and sale of Pepsi, 7Up, Mirinda drinks in the Russian market, keeping only supplies of essential goods such as dairy products and baby food. Stocks of Coca-Cola produced in Russia in retail chains in Moscow and St. Petersburg began to run out in the summer, first of all, bottles larger than 1–2 liters were sold out.

After the departure of the largest international players, their niche in the market began to be occupied by local soda producers, who began to produce analogue drinks. In just seven months of 2022, the assortment of cola-flavored drinks in retail chains increased from 169 to 186 brands, according to research company NielsenIQ. But sales of soda in Russia fell overall in 2022: in the 12 months to November 2022, the reduction was 9.8% (in rubles, sales increased by 3.6% due to rising prices).

Along with analogues of the popular soda, products that completely imitate the original Coca-Cola began to appear in retail. So, in November-December, the Svetofor network and some non-chain retail stores launched a drink, the bottle and label of which completely match the original Russian-made Coca-Cola. Multon Partners assured that this drink cannot be original, as the company stopped producing these drinks in April 2022.

Why Coca-Cola is still one of the best sellers

The original Coca-Cola still occupies a significant share of the Russian market, even though its unit sales, according to Prodazhi.rf, fell by 78% year-on-year in the first two months of 2023, while the price rose on average by 68%. After the departure of international soda brands from Russia, not only local producers, but also suppliers of this product from neighboring countries became more active. For example, Coca-Cola from Germany, Poland, Great Britain, Albania, Belarus and Iran appeared in shops and catering outlets. True, in the case of soda from Iran, Coca-Cola in a red aluminum can is similar to the original only in appearance: the drink is poured by the Iranian Khoshgovar Tehran Co, RBC pointed out.

The assortment of Azbuka Vkusa includes Coca-Cola, which is produced in Azerbaijan, Denmark, Turkey, Poland, Italy and the UK. “We did not follow the path of replacing the departed imported brands with various domestic counterparts, but returned them,” explains the representative of the network.

New cola analogues on the Russian market did not carry out serious marketing campaigns, therefore they could not form a significant group of loyal consumers, says Alexey Popovichev, executive DIRECTOR of the Rusbrand association. Therefore, the buyer prefers the familiar Coca-Cola brand, which has long maintained a leading position in the Russian market, the expert believes. According to him, imported Coca-Cola can be legally supplied to Russia by other countries on parallel imports, as well as countries of the Eurasian Economic Union that have a common customs space with Russia, which have their own production of the original drink at Coca-Cola HBC bottler factories - for example, Kazakhstan .

Distributors do not import imported Coca-Cola into Russia directly, but buy up stock deliveries, that is, surplus products in warehouses, from the market of any country that can freely supply goods to Russia, says RBC's source in the soft drinks market. “The cargo can go through the UAE, Iran or Turkey, but it is now closed. In fact, these are not systemic deliveries, but spot lots of cola, which can be sold for four times as much. This increases the marginality of the product,” says the expert. Companies from Kazakhstan also benefit from deliveries to Russia: when ordering a larger volume of goods, the network sells the main batch on the domestic market, and forwards the surplus to Russia, while receiving a discount due to volumes, RBC's interlocutor explains.