April 18, 2008

Coke’s Quest For Eco-Friendly Vending Machines Hits Snag

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Companies like GE, Wal-Mart, and Procter & Gamble have found it difficult at times to get their customers and distributors to go along with their green initiatives, Fortune reports.

Look at Coke. The company has invested $40 million in research and testing and organized a coalition of companies that sell cold drinks and ice cream, including Unilever, McDonald’s and PepsiCo, in order to get rid of conventional and inefficient vending machines and commercial coolers and create a HFC-free, super-efficient vending machine. About 8,000 of the new machines have been deployed.

That only leaves about 10 million to go, according to the article.

The problem Coke is facing is that independent bottlers don’t want to pay extra for HFC-free units and manufacturers don’t want to spend the necessary money to retool production lines in order to produce them in bulk.

To change the industry Coke needs to get other buyers involved, as well as compressor manufacturers, component manufacturers, and system integrators. All of these companies are heavily invested in HFC technology.

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