Upgrading System & Emergency Lighting in Lehigh

Submitted by Brian Horwath:

The Coca Cola Company of the Lehigh Valley continues to gain momentum with upgrading the system in food safety considerations.  In a multiple stage process, necessary repair improvements were made to increase good manufacturing practices and strengthen quality.

Before:

After:

We have upgraded our fire protection system with emergency lighting, visual, and audio.  Below is a picture of one of the units installed.  This will assist the operators in the case of an emergency during the evening hours where previously there was not.

Innovation and Safety Upgrades

Cultivating an environment of continuous improvement, the Coca Cola Bottling Company has combined safety and innovation to address improvement opportunities in the Production Department.  Upgrading machine guarding was identified as a focus for the Maintenance Department.  Completion was seen as a difficult task at first; but, Paul Milkovits took his conceptual ideas and followed them to fruition. These equipment upgrades started from his images and through his skill base, were built and theory became reality.  We are all very proud of Paul, his achievements, and his focus to safety and continual improvement.

Brian Horwath

Director of Operations

Coca Cola Billboard Partnership Program

Submitted by: Chuck Evans, Director of Sales & Marketing

COCA-COLA BILLBOARD PARTNERSHIP PROGRAM

When we acquired the naming rights of Coca-Cola Park, we also acquired marketing assets such as outfield billboards and concourse signage. Early on we used these signage assets to leverage branding of our products.  We also took a chance in leveraging one of the outfield billboards with one of our customers, Wegman’s in return for space.  The partnership concept worked as we gave Wegman’s a billboard to market their name, and in return we were given additional space in the store for displays.  This lasted 5 years, as Wegman’s did not renew their partnership and was going to use that space for their intention to promote alcohol.  As a result, we decided to look at using the signage for additional customers.

Through ABE's SMT, in our S-3 Strategy - Grow Volume & Sparkling, we looked to use our Coca-Cola Park assets with our top 2 customers, Giant & Weis.  We created a similar program with both in leveraging advertising on the billboards for acquiring additional space for displays to grow sparkling and MC.  As a result this past summer, we were up 27.8K cases, 4.2% in volume and up $428.6K, 17.9% in MC over prior year.

To emphasize the results of our display packages thru our Coke Park partnership program with Giant, 20pk volume was up 13.5% and 16.8% MC, and 2L volume was up 11.6% and 26.5% MC.

We also instituted the same Iron Pigs partnership program with Weis and thru incremental displays, 20pk volume was up 44.3% and 123.3% MC, and 2L volume is up 7.5% and 14% MC.

Due to the success, we took this program one step further and have now reached a similar program with our top Independent C&P chain, Topstar and also just reached an agreement with Walmart, running the partnership program Feb - Dec.

The attached picture is the beginning of the Coca-Cola Park partnership program with Walmart.