Coca-Cola may disrupt production in Venezuela

Mexican Coca-Cola Femsa (KOF), the largest bottler of Coca-Cola soft drinks in the world, warned on Friday (20) to its factories in Venezuela can disrupt the production due to the shutdown of the operations of the national sugar plants, which provide refined sugar and that, in turn, lack of raw materials.
Through a statement, the company said that its four factories continue producing "until it runs out the stock of industrial refined sugar in existence".
"If that stock is not restored quickly, there will be temporary interruptions in the production of beverages with sugar", detailed.
Although 90 percent of Coca-Cola''s products use sugar in their composition, the Mexican company, which employs more than 7 1000 employees in Venezuela, does not provide for its closure in the country. "We''re not going to leave the country," said the company, which added that it is "anticipating" enabling specific actions through this juncture "in coordination with suppliers, competent authorities and workers".
Coca-Cola Femsa (KOF) is present in nine countries, eight of them in Latin America (Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela), a region in which continues to grow. In 2013, the company reached the Philippines, seeking to expand in the Asian market.
In Venezuela, the company operates for more than a decade after the liquor unit of Coca-Cola Femsa bought in 2003 the Panamco (Panamerican Beverages, Inc.), one of the largest transactions made by a Mexican company in international markets, according to their historical records.
The Venezuela has been facing for years a severe shortage of food and medicine that entrepreneurs attribute the lack of raw material that, on occasion, must be imported by following complicated bureaucratic procedures to request hard currency to the State, which carries out the Exchange monopoly since 2003.