City bears brunt of Coke job cuts

President calls changes ‘difficult,’ but ‘necessary.’

Coca-Cola said Tuesday it will cut 1,200 corporate jobs this year as part of an expanded cost-cutting program as it grapples with sluggish soda sales and internal restructuring.

Coca-Cola President James Quincey, who takes over as chief executive of the Atlanta company on May 1, announced the job cuts during a conference call with investors after the company’s first-quarter earnings announcement.

Quincey said most of the job cuts will be at the company’s Atlanta headquarters.

The company has about 7,500 employees in metro Atlanta and 9,000 in Georgia, including both bottling operations and its corporate headquarters.

“The majority of the job reductions will be in Atlanta,” said Quincey, who is replacing longtime CEO Muhtar Kent. “As painful as it is, I still think that’s the right decision.”

The job cuts will begin in the second half of 2017 and extend into 2018.

A spokesman said the reduction will come through involuntary job cuts or transfers to other positions rather than buy-outs.

Coca-Cola hopes to save about $800 million annually though the layoffs and other actions by 2019, and to reinvest half of that back into the business, mostly in new products.

Quincey and other company officials said the job cuts and other cost-cutting efforts are tied to a yearslong restructuring that has included re-tooling bottling operations and buying or launching scores of new products to offset slowing growth of its core soda business.

Customers have been turning to other drinks and avoiding sugary sodas partly due to concerns about the risk of obesity and diabetes. A recent report showed that in 2016, Americans for the first time drank more bottled water than soda on a per capita basis.

Coca-Cola’s worldwide employment swelled past 150,000 workers a few years ago as it bought up its bottlers and distributors around the world, to make them more efficient and quicker at launching new products.

But over the last two years it has been selling or “refranchising” those bottlers at a rapid clip, and its total headcount is expected to fall below 40,000 by next year as many of its current employees follow those bottlers out the door.

Coca-Cola currently has 100,300 employees worldwide, including 57,300 in North America.

As a result of its evolving structure, said Quincey, the company is re-thinking which corporate jobs are

DAVID BARNES / DAVID.BARNES@AJC.COM On Tuesday, Coca-Cola reported big drops in both revenue and profits in the first quarter, mostly due to shedding bottling businesses.