REFRESHING SOUTH AFRICA

Ccbsa Project

DIRECTED BY:

JAMIE WAITE ARTICLE

WRITTEN BY: LAURA WATLING

Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa’s journey to sustainable success

Coca-Cola. Heard of them?

Of course, Coca-Cola is ranked as the leading soft drink brand worldwide, with a global brand value of over $89 billion.

And when considering one of the world’s largest, multinational businesses, it’s par for the course that in 2023 it will be flexing its sustainability muscles.

However, its strategic partner in South Africa, Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) is truly going further than average when it comes to sustainability.

Formed out of the conglomeration of a majority of South Africa’s bottlers in 2016, CCBSA is now the biggest bottler in its continent, supplying 40% of Coca-Cola products in Africa.

With 13 plants across the country (excluding the Western Cape), it produces 70% of Coca-Cola’s bottled brands in South Africa.

CCBSA, which maintains the manufacture, sales, and distribution of Coca-Cola products in South Africa, is 66.5% owned by Coca-Cola Company and 33.5% by Gutsche Family Investments.

Brands produced by the bottler include Schweppes, Fanta, Stoney Ginger Beer, Bonaqua water and, always, Coca Cola.

Doing The Right Thing

CCBSA’s vision is to “refresh Africa everyday and make our continent better for all”, it aims to do so by making a difference in sustainability, safety, empowerment and local sourcing, whilst delivering sustainable and profitable revenue growth to its customers.

Leading the front in CCBSA’s innovative sustainability measures is Ntsako Baloyi, Head of Sustainability.

Having completed his degree in Environmental Science at the University of Cape Town, Ntsako engaged in roles in the mining and oil and gas sector managing SLR Consulting Environmental Impact Assessment projects. He also took on a role at BHP Billiton as an Environment and Quality Specialist and as Management Consultant at Accenture.

Moving into the world of beverages in 2016, Ntsako carved out his role at CCBSA starting as the Environmental Manager, moving on to become the EA to the Public Affairs Communication and Sustainability department, before his promotion to Head of Sustainability. He is a Chartered Environmentalist with the Society for the Environment in the UK and a Professionally Registered Environmental Scientist with the South African Council for Natural and Scientific Professions.

“Coca-Cola really cares about its people, and I am an example of career development within the business,” Ntsako shared.

Recently, CCBSA announced a joint venture with Henley Business School in a strategic learning partnership for select suppliers.

The partnership will see 20 qualifying suppliers attend a 12-month programme to obtain a Postgraduate Diploma in Management Practice Supplier Development Programme.

The programme is targeted at suppliers who are at least 51% black-owned enterprises, exempt micro-enterprises or qualifying small enterprises in line with the Broad Based Black Economic Empowerment Codes of Good Practice.

“The qualification is linked to Coca-Cola practices and enables participants to succeed within the Coca-Cola System,” explained Ntsako, “our aim is to amplify and accelerate both our people and the business”.

Touching on values, Ntsako highlighted the importance of remaining agile in an ever-changing world, creating focus and awareness, and adding to the value chain.

Fighting Vulnerabilities

Aligning with CCBSA’s mission and vision, it has implemented three main pillars to commit to increasing sustainability: Water, Waste, and Partnerships.

“Our commitment to sustainability goes far beyond compliance, it forms part of our everyday core business and is critical to not only us but those around us,” said Nstako.

Water

South Africa is known to be one of the driest regions in the world, with the country’s average rainfall at 464mm - almost half the world’s average. Meanwhile, 80% of CCBSA’s business is water based. The water pillar in its sustainability measures is therefore crucial to the future of both CCBSA, South Africa, and its people and wildlife.

Prior to implementing regenerative measures, CCBSA was using two litres of water for every one litre of bottled product, or 2:1 as a water use ratio. By 2022, through its regenerative operations it has reduced this to 1.64:1.

A measure implemented by CCBSA is its Healthy Watersheds strategy, which supports a number of watershed restoration projects in locations where

About Global Water Challenge (GWC)

At Global Water Challenge (GWC) we believe in the power of collective action to advance global water security and achieve universal access to safe and affordable drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) in communities around the world.

Since 2006, our programs and multi-sector partnerships in Africa, the Americas and Asia have positively impacted over 3 million people with clean water access and our campaigns, tools, data and best practices reach millions more.

In collaboration with multi-sector partners, GWC engages for action – catalyzing financial resources and driving innovative programming for sustainable, local solutions. For more information, please visit globalwaterchallenge.org.

Global Water Challenge and Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa

South Africa is amongst the most water scarce countries in the world, with climate change increasingly exacerbating the conditions. Coca-Cola Beverages South Africa (CCBSA) have prioritized their efforts to alleviate the environmental and human impacts of water scarcity. Building on our long standing partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, GWC is collaborating with CCBSA on a strategic partnership that will increase water security, provide sustainable economic opportunities and improve conservation outcomes. Our partnership will help protect South Africa’s key watersheds , rehabilitating and preserving key source water areas around the country, improving watershed health and building water resilience for communities in water scarce regions.

water is most scarce. The strategy implements watershed stewardship plans whilst also sourcing “water-sustainable” ingredients and supporting landscape solutions.

“My favourite part of our Water Strategy Framework is the “Resilient Communities’’ pillar. This aims to support communities with climate change, as well as providing the communities in which we work with water access to vulnerable communities. Importantly, this strand focuses on empowering women and girls,” explained Ntsako.

A successful project within water sustainability spearheaded by Ntsako is the Coke Ville Project.

Launched in 2020, the ground-breaking project is an off-grid, solar-powered groundwater harvesting and treatment programme — targeting communities experiencing water insecurity.

1 https://www.theguardian.com/ environment/2023/mar/08/ plastic-particles-oceans-marine-pollutionproduction

In two years, the project generated more than 150-million litres of water. To date, the water generated is over 450 million litres and has benefited over 25,000 households.

Additionally, since establishing Coke Ville, a 100 litre water wheel has been generated, enabling access to water for the most vulnerable.

“The overarching aim for our water strategy is to replenish 100% of water used by 2030,” he continued.

By the close of 2022, CCBSA had replenished 1 billion litres of water. The aim for 2023 is 1.2 billion and by 2030 - 100% of water and beyond.

Waste

In 2023 it was reported that scientists believe there are more than 170 trillion plastic particles within the globe’s oceans.1

It is crucial, then, that CCBSA plays its role in the reduction of plastic waste.

CCBSA’s World Without Waste vision is an ambitious sustainable packaging strategy which has at its core, a commitment to collect or recycle a bottle or can for each one it sells by 2030 and make 100% of its packaging recyclable by 2025. In line with that vision, through better and smart packaging design, CCBSA has committed to use at least 50% recycled material in its packaging by 2030.

“We are making innovations to our product packaging such as Sprite, Stoney, and Appletiser to decolourise bottles making them more versatile at point of recycling,” shared Ntsako, “this requires us to ensure the product taste, quality and shelf life isn’t compromised”.

In addition, the CCBSA team is making sustainable innovations to product sleeves.

Focussing on community empowerment within this strand, CCBSA has also implemented recycling and collection buyback centres run by women and young people, creating a circular economy.

“It’s important that we encourage the end consumer to consider their recycling habits, so we’ve also run successful school recycling campaigns to embed a culture of recycling at the earliest stage. In return, we have been able to support disadvantaged schools,” said Ntsako.

Partnerships

The final prong to CCBSA’s three key sustainability objectives focuses on working with its suppliers and customers to ensure its products don’t finish their lifecycle in landfill.

“We undertake a lot of awareness work to drive the circular economy in South Africa. Ultimately, we have the ability to “show our receipts” when Coca-Cola’s sustainability is put into question,” said Ntsako.

Ensuring A Sustainable Business

Whilst CCBSA’s sustainability measures are firmly in place and here to stay, Ntsako highlighted other innovations that the business will need to address to ensure sustainability of the business.

“We are currently sat within a volatile market, particularly within the continent of Africa. We have a lot of energy issues in the region including blackouts, and so we need to develop innovative ways to minimise disruption,” explained Ntsako, “We are also developing our postpandemic Affordability Strategy, which will ensure we can operate efficiently whilst also be affordable for our consumers”.

Ultimately, it is key for CCBSA to be not only profitable but sustainable, whilst remaining customer focussed and having a positive impact on the world around it.

With the likes of Ntsako Baloyi leading the way, there is no doubt that CCBSA will be a beacon for other businesses to follow.

www.ccbsaco.com