Coca-Cola’s second largest bottler, Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, has reached an agreement with ContourGlobal to build 15 new combined heat and power plants by the end of 2009. They will be built at facilities in Austria, Czech Republic, Greece, Northern Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Nigeria, Serbia and the Ukraine. Italy, Russia and Romania will each have two facilities built. Coca-Cola said each plant will reduce CO2 emissions by at least 40 percent.
In addition, Coca-Cola and ZAP announced a project to use 30 of Zap’s compact trucks for a new beverage distribution system in Montevideo, Uruguay. Officials from Coca-Cola subsidiary Montevideo Refrescos and ZAP say that they are testing new efficient motors as part of the project, and if it is successful, they might expand to large cities around the world where rising gas prices, traffic congestion, pollution and parking shortages restrict the use of large delivery trucks, according to the companies. Officials say that the new distribution model using these trucks averages about one-fifth the fuel consumption of the former model.
