It seems Cadbury-Schweppes plans to split into two separate companies: a candy company and a soft drink company.

At first, I thought that this might be good news, but as I read more about what is likely to happen, I became more concerned. If the soft drinks are spun off in a U.S.-based company, the most likely thing to happen would be for the poorer-selling soft drinks to be eliminated. If the soft drink business is sold off to a private equity firm, the rights to most of the underperforming drinks would most likely be sold off. In either case, I get the impression that our choices of soft drinks will decrease after this demerger.

Business is Business. If poorer performing drinks are a drain to the bottom line it only makes sense to get rid of them. Why would any company want to keep sku's around just for a few dedicated consumers? The beverage business is a volume based business. Of more importance, the CSD business is a volume business.

Or maybe it would be a good thing. Over the past several years we have seen many smaller companies swallowed up by the evil corporate giants. What has this given us? Limited sku's and some brands disappearing completely. If brands were sold by a pending investment group maybe we could see a return of missing brands. One can always hope.....

Let'em sell them off, we will drink them.

will coke FINALLY buy dr pepper?

Dr Pepper has too much market share. The FTC would never allow it.

This move will put C-S on par with Coke. A beverage-only company.

Plus, C-S now owns most of their own bottling operations. So, a company that focuses only on beverage development and distribution could be a lot stronger than the current behemoth that exists.

Maybe #3 could give Coke and Pepsi a real run for their money.

The split should be fairly uncomplicated, since C-S reorganized all the beverage operations.. Previously you had Snapple, Motts and DPSU all separate.

Originally Posted by popologist

will coke FINALLY buy dr pepper?

Coke owns Dr Pepper. In all but 17 countries, including the USA. The government will not let KO buy it here. Similarly, Pepsi owns 7UP everywhere but the USA. The government will never agree. In any event bottler deals overlay who is running the corporate HQ anyway.

A C-S split off makes sense. The S side is a, more or less, US soft drinks company, not owning the brand names elsewhere, while the C side is a everywhere else candy company, having liscensed its candy brand name in the USA to Hershey.

The C-S split does make sense. Soft drinks are way more profitable than candies. Our C-S rep was here yesterday and is quite happy about it because they will no longer be subsidizing the candy business and will no longer have to report to London. It will once again be an American run company. I hope it works out.

We basically have 3 main pop companies in canada. Pepsi, Coke and Cadbury Schweppes. On that note Pepsi bottles for C-S so technically we only have two bottlers. It makes for not a lot of options in a pretty optionless country.

While I would really like to see C-S be on par with Coke and Pepsi, I'd hate to see some products go away. C-S has acquired many overlapping soft drinks:

A&W/Hires/I.B.C.
Orange Crush/Sunkist Orange/Nehi Orange
Welch's Grape/Nehi Grape
Canada Dry/Vernors/Schweppes Ginger Ale

If a private firm buys the C-S beverage business, then most of the redundant brand names would probably be sold off to smaller beverage firms. If C-S beverages becomes a free-standing company after the split, however, the company's best interest might be to retire the redundant brands instead of selling an established brand name product to a competing company.