People are already hoarding masks, hand sanitizer, and canned goods because of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Could Diet Coke be next?
The Coca-Cola company, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday, said it depends on Chinese suppliers for sweeteners that are a key ingredient to the popular diet soda. The company also warned of possible supply chain issues in the long term, should the outbreak continue to grow.
That key ingredient is called “sucralose” and it’s used in everything from Diet Coke to Powerade Zero to Dasani flavored waters. Coke says it is implementing procedures to procure the ingredient from other sources and does not foresee a short-term impact, but said it could experience “tighter supplies” in the long term.
“As a result of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus COVID-19 … our suppliers in China have experienced some delays in the production and export of these ingredients,” the company said in its filing. “We have initiated contingency supply plans and do not foresee a short-term impact due to these delays. However, we may see tighter supplies of some of these ingredients in the longer term should production or export operations in China deteriorate.”
Coke added it expects the COVID-19 outbreak to negatively impact first quarter results, but did not expect, at this time, the coronavirus to change its full year performance.
“Based on our current expectations, we believe this disruption will negatively impact our unit case volume and financial results for the first quarter of 2020,” the company said. “At this time, we do not expect this disruption to have a significant impact on our full year 2020 unit case volume or financial results.”
Clarification, March 3, 2020: An earlier version of this story listed Diet Coke with Splenda as one of the affected beverages. Splenda-brand sucralose products are made in the USA and not affected by China supply chain issues.
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