**Source: Interfax 6/6/95
The company already has similar divisions in Murmansk, Cherepovets, Petrozavodsk, Novgorod, and Pskov.
Coca-Cola had been working with a local dealer in the enclave, Vikki, which trucked the beverages in from neighboring Lithuania, but achieved sales of no more than 15,000 bottles a week. Coca-Cola, however, has now dropped Vikki, which owes it $50,000.
It still has a fight on its hands in Kaliningrad, since locally-bottled Pepsi is less than half the price.
Yuri Vertoprakhov, Coca-Cola regional manager, said he believed the enclave warranted a stock of four 40-foot containers to be topped up once a week. He said his company would supply local retailers with 20 free post-mix drinks vending machines.
Baltic Refreshments, the Russian-Austrian joint venture that bottles Pepsi Cola in Kaliningrad, said it was selling 30,000 bottles a day, a figure high-priced Coca-Cola could not touch, even if it combined sales figures for all its beverages.
**Source Interfax 7/17/95
Pepsi-Cola International plans to increase sales in Russia by introducing new products and finding more Russian partners to bottle drinks, Neil Bainton, marketing director at the company's Moscow office told Interfax.
Bainton said sales during the last twelve months had been up 45% due mainly to the appearance of Mirinda, a new product, on the Russian market.
He said also that over 20 factories as far flung as Novosibirsk, Novorossisk and Krasnoyarsk and Ochakovo, a joint venture from Moscow, were bottling Pepsi drinks in Russia.
Pepsi-Cola International represents Pepsi-Cola, a US soft drinks giant, abroad. Products include Pepsi-Cola, an old favorite, 7Up, Mirinda and Frito Lay potato chips.
Pepsi's world sales last year totalled $30 billion. The biggest sellers were Pepsi-Cola at $17.9 billion, 7Up at $1.9 billion and Mirinda, sold only outside the USA, at $1.2 billion.
**Source - Interfax 8/16/95
Russian fruit drink trader Tampico hopes to raise 100 billion rubles or about $22 million in a second share issue to put its brand-name beverages into production at a new plant outside Moscow and at smaller facilities at more than 100 dairies nationwide.
Tampico, which sells drinks of the same name made by Marbo Inc of the United States, hopes to shift 10 million 10,000 ruble shares starting this September, Alexei Shcherbakov, its managing director, told Interfax.
If it raises the money, said Shcherbakov, Tampico should be turning out 140-150 liters a year by the end of 1996.
Citibank, said Shcherbakov, has shown interest in buying a major share package, not least because Tampico has good brand recognition in the United States.
Tampico currently sells American-made concentrate to 29 Russian dairies for diluting and packaging. Its biggest producers in Russia are the Ochakovo, Cherkizovo and Mytishchi dairies, which respectively make 7,200 tonnes, 3,600 tonnes and 3,600 tonnes of the drinks a month. Dairies in Perm and Yaroslavl are also prominent Tampico producers.
Tampico's 500 million ruble charter capital is split 50-50 between Marbo Inc., via its official Moscow representative Interforce Trading Inc, and Russia's B.F.G. Trading.
The company currently sells a range of six basic Tampico concentrates - sweet fruit drinks with added vitamins. It is says it might even manufacture concentrates apple drink in Krasnodar territory and sea-buckthorn in Barnaul, Altai territory.
**Source: Interfax 8/23/95
US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola will take a 10% stake in a factory Turkey's Efes is building in Rostov, southern Russia.
Officials at Rostov Promstroibank, whose affiliate Bogash will also take 10% in the factory, told Interfax Coco-Cola and the Turks would invest at least $20 million or 90% of the money needed.
Efes, they said, will own 80% of the $250,000 charter capital of the company set up to build and run the factory.
Bogash, a beverage trader set up by Promstroibank and a local brewery, will provide a six hectare site for the factory. Promstroibank will finance infrastructure developments.
Bank officials said the factory should start turning out drinks to meet peak demand next summer, eventually reaching output of $40 million a year. Coca-Cola and Efes expect to recoup their investments within five years by taking a major share of the soft drinks market in the Northern Caucasus.
** Interfax 10/03/95
Bacardi-Martini this weekend launched a Russian advertising campaign in a bid to improve sales in what is already its biggest export market.
Peter Lemagnen, Bacardi-Martini's vice president, said the company hoped to raise Russian sales to from 10% of all exports in 1994 to 30% in 1995. Russia, with annual sales of 4.5 million liters, over the last two years has replaced Hungary as the single biggest export market for Bacardi-Martini, he said.
Igor Kosaryev, commercial director of Roust International Commerce and Trade, Bacardi-Martini's exclusive distributor in Russia, said the Italian drink maker had not ruled out bottling its products in Russia, especially close to the Moscow market. Roust has almost 170 distributors, including 24 regional dealers, five of them in Moscow, he said.