The Coca-Cola Co. and a local bottling company have been accused of fraudulent product labelling in Nigeria by the consumer watchdog.
Nigeria’s Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) slammed Coca-Cola Nigeria and Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC), a member of the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, in a statement yesterday (1 August).
The competition commission has accused both companies of misleading trade descriptions, unfair marketing tactics and failure to comply with regulatory requirements.
The investigation, which began in June 2019, revealed that Coca-Cola changed the formulation of its Coke brand from regular sugar to non-nutritive sweeteners without informing consumers.
The companies marketed the Coca-Cola ‘Original Taste, Less Sugar’ as the same as its ‘Original Taste’ variant in terms of formulation, which was found to be untrue.
It was alleged that these practices followed similar actions with the Sprite and Fanta brands, which violated FCCPA regulations on misleading trade descriptions and abuse of dominant market positions in certain locations.
“The migration at the time, though not concluded, apparently followed previously concluded, but undisclosed and uncommunicated migrations with respect to their other brands, to wit: Fanta and Sprite (as the Investigation will later discover),” the FCCPC statement said.
The FCCPC opened an official investigation between June 2019 and December 2020 of Coca-Cola Nigeria and NBC where it found them both to be in violation of regulatory rules.
Coca-Cola and NBC then “initially sought to end the investigation and regulatory process by adopting clearer, more transparent and truthful descriptions and differentiation of the relevant variants of their products”, according to the FCCPC, which it accommodated.
However, as of Monday (29 July), the FCCPC issued its final order on the two companies since it found them both to continue violating laws through misleading labelling.
In a statement to Just Drinks, the Coca-Cola system in Nigeria, which includes NBC, said: “Coca‑Cola Nigeria provides clear, accessible nutrition information on our packaging in line with national regulatory requirements and is committed to transparency for consumers.
“Our priority is safeguarding consumer interests, and we will continue to work constructively with the government on this matter. We strongly believe that the Coca‑Cola System in Nigeria has complied with all regulations and look forward to the opportunity to bring this topic to closure.”
