ATLANTA: Coca-Cola is planning to cut up to 1,800 jobs in its operations around the globe as part of its plan to slash $3 billion in costs.
The announcement was made as a new global CMO is set to take the reins as Coke faces ailing sales and increasing pressure from health and anti-sugar activists.
In October, Coke said it planned to save $3 billion in annual costs by 2019, a target that would include job cuts. While the company confirmed the number of eliminations this week, it said it did not have specifics about how and where redundancies might affect marketing departments.
The 1,600 to 1,800 job cuts will affect Coke’s Atlanta headquarters, as well as international offices. Coca-Cola said that "while different parts of the business will announce changes at various times," it had identified "positions in corporate, Coca-Cola North America, and Coca-Cola International that will be eliminated in the coming months."
Muhtar Kent, the group’s chief executive, said in October that cost-cutting changes would also include streamlining the business and launching more targeted brand investments.
The same month, Marcos De Quinto was appointed global CMO. He will replace incumbent Joe Tripodi, who is retiring at the end of next month.
"As part of our recently announced, multi-year productivity initiatives, we are redesigning our operating model to streamline and simplify our structure and accelerate the growth of our global business. As we have acknowledged previously, this redesign work will result in impacts to jobs across our global operations," Coca-Cola said in a statement. "We do not take decisions about job impacts lightly. We have committed that we will ensure fair, equitable, and compassionate treatment of our people throughout this process."
The soft-drink giant reported a 14% decline in net income to $2.1 billion for the July-through-September period of last year.
Kent has implemented strict controls on budgeting, which means marketing departments have to justify spend campaign-by-campaign, rather than having budgets allotted on an annual basis.
This story originally appeared on Marketing.
