By Wouter Vermeulen, Vice-President Sustainability and Public Policy, Coca-Cola Europe
Bay Bashir opened his first corner shop in Middlesbrough (Great Britain) in 1998. He’d recently had a baby and had no experience of how to run a store, but he also had a dream to build a legacy for his new family. It was hard work, with late nights and long weekends. But over time, Bay and his family built a thriving business grounded in their local community. Today, Bay is the proud owner of five convenience stores across the town, which he operates with help from his sons, Max and Ellis. As he looks to the future, he is preparing to hand over the reins to the next generation.
This year, we’re celebrating 125 years of serving Coca‑Cola in Great Britain, together with our local independent retail partners like Bay. Corner shops, and “The Bosses” – the affectionate industry term for shopkeepers – aren’t just an essential part of the Coca‑Cola system; they are pillars of their communities whose value to society goes beyond the products they sell.
As I travel across Europe and meet with colleagues, customers and consumers, I am reminded of the different ways this value creation takes shape. In France, for example, 100% of the sugar used in our drinks is sourced locally, supporting French sugar beet farmers.
Our efforts towards local communities are matched by a constant focus on innovation to drive positive change, contribute to industry-wide transformations, and help deliver a better shared future. We have done this in Italy, where we became the first soft drinks company in the country to launch a bottle made from 100% recycled PET, excluding label and cap. This was done thanks to continued investments in packaging innovation from our bottling partner CCHBC – including a €30 million investment to transform a disused plant in Gaglianico (Piedmont) into a state-of-the-art production hub transforming up to 30,000 tonnes of PET each year.
In Ireland, our concentrate manufacturing facility in Ballina, has been recognised by the World Economic Forum’s Lighthouse project as a leading manufacturer in applying Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies – such as robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), advanced data analysis and cloud computing – to increase productivity and sustainability. These innovations help reduce waste, use energy more efficiently, and help keep supply chains resilient, ensuring we can continue serving customers and communities without disruption.
As part of our global sustainability commitment to advancing water security, we have partnered over the years with more than 30 local NGOs across Europe to deliver over 100 projects – from nature-based solutions that restore biodiversity in the Netherlands, to regenerative agriculture using water‑saving irrigation in Spain, to community initiatives that recycle water in Greece. Drawing on lessons learned from these business–NGO collaborations, we have made our insights publicly available to encourage knowledge sharing and drive collective action.
Ultimately, serving communities means truly understanding their needs, expectations, and concerns – and placing them at the center of how we operate. That’s why we work closely with customers and partners to innovate in ways that reflect everyday realities, local differences, and evolving tastes and preferences. At the heart of our innovation in Europe is our R&D Center in Brussels, which for 25 years has been turning transformative ideas into products and solutions that reach more than 2 billion consumers across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
But to advance on our innovation promise, we need decision-makers at both the EU and national level to foster an enabling policy environment. This includes building public understanding and trust in innovation – including food science and technology – through active countering of misinformation, challenging confusing concepts such as ‘Ultra Processed Food’, and safeguarding of science-based policymaking. It should also look to strengthen the resilience and competitiveness of the food & beverage industry by supporting investments in areas such as circular economy or sustainable agriculture – not undermining them with discriminatory taxation that add to consumers food bills and thwart the sector’s positive impact across the entire value chain, from producers and suppliers to retailers and the local economies they support. Finally, there is a clear opportunity for policymakers to ensure legislation is future proof through collaborative policy development involving all stakeholders, ensuring real-world operational realities are captured.
We will continue to innovate and invest, supporting Europe’s resilience and prosperity, one community at a time. From the corner stores in Great Britain like Bay’s, to the neighbourhood restaurants in Germany, and the local cafés in Romania, we will stay present in the everyday places at the heart of European life. And as the next chapter unfolds, our ambition is to keep creating shared value through growth and innovation – so that a century from now, we’ll still be telling stories together with the communities we serve.
