Coca-Cola — Wholesale Supply

Three products go by the name "Coca-Cola in glass"

Ask three European suppliers for Coca-Cola in glass and you can be offered three genuinely different products. That is a fair summary of what makes this brand awkward to buy across a border: the trademark is identical everywhere, and almost nothing behind it is. Iguazu Trading is an independent distributor of genuine brand-owner stock, EU-produced and supplied in the manufacturer's own sealed packaging, and this page sets out the specification questions we settle in writing before a pro-forma is issued.

The first is one-way retail glass, produced to be sold, emptied and recycled. The second is glass built for export and food service, again non-returnable. The third is returnable glass, and it is the one that catches importers out. A returnable bottle is not really packaging; it is an asset circulating inside a domestic deposit pool, filled, distributed, collected and refilled locally. In Spain that pool is largely a hospitality one, moving in crates between the filler and the venue. Export a returnable bottle and the pool loses it permanently, while your customer receives a bottle nobody at their end will take back.

So we quote one-way formats for export, and where the only glass in a given allocation is returnable, we say so rather than shipping it and letting the deposit question surface at the far end. If your buyer specifically wants glass on the table, tell us the market and we will confirm what the current allocation actually supports.

Deposit marks and recycling symbols on export stock

European cans and bottles increasingly carry deposit-return scheme marks and national recycling logos printed directly onto the can body or the label, because the pack was produced for a market that operates such a scheme. Stock like this is entirely genuine; the mark simply reflects where the run was destined. Two practical consequences follow. Outside the scheme that issued it, the mark is informational and has no redemption value, which is worth explaining to a retail customer before they see it. And it does not substitute for the destination's own labelling requirements, which in many markets mean the mandatory particulars have to be legible in a specified language.

Where a market permits translated stickering, the sticker normally forms part of the label the authority assesses rather than something applied afterwards for convenience. Name the destination and the labelling rule you work to when you enquire, and the production market the stock in front of us was filled for is confirmed before you commit to anything.

Format decides the channel, and then it decides the load

Format	Channel it serves	What it does to the load
330ml cans, trays and shrink multipacks	Grocery multipack, vending, convenience	Stacks predictably; a filled can is internally pressurised, which stiffens the pack
500ml PET	Forecourt, impulse, on-the-go	Most packaging per litre sold, so more cases per tonne of payload
1.5L and 2L PET	Take-home grocery	Dense; reaches the payload ceiling with floor space still unused
One-way glass	Hospitality and food service	Heaviest per litre delivered; bottom placement, no double-stacking

Carbonated soft drinks are weight-limited cargo rather than volume-limited cargo, which is the single most useful thing to understand before you compare a 20ft quote against a 40ft one. How many cases sit in a layer, how many layers make a pallet and how many pallets reach the doors all depend on the precise format and on what has been allocated, so those three numbers are written onto the pro-forma against reserved stock rather than published here as constants. Our guide to pallets and container loading explains why a published figure is usually the wrong one.

Regular, zero and the sugar split

We quote sugar-free variants as separate lines, not as a footnote to the standard one. They carry their own barcodes, they rotate differently on shelf, and in a growing number of destinations they are treated differently for tax. Several markets levy an excise or a levy on sweetened drinks, and some assess it in bands keyed to sugar content per 100ml rather than as a flat charge on value. Where that applies, the proportion of regular to zero inside your container is a landed-cost decision before it is a merchandising one.

We do not calculate anyone's excise. The banding, the definitions and the registration obligations sit with your own authority and your broker. What we do is state the variant and the declared composition from the pack for every line on the offer, so the calculation can be done before the goods are reserved, and quote two different splits side by side if you want to compare them.

What travels with the goods

Each consignment ships with a commercial invoice, a packing list, the export declaration and the transport document, plus a Certificate of Origin, or a EUR.1 movement certificate where the destination holds a preferential trade agreement with the EU and the goods qualify under it. Batch identification and best-before dating are recorded on the shipping paperwork and confirmed against the allocation before payment rather than asserted in advance.

One point of principle, because it is a legal question rather than a stylistic one: we hold no appointment, no exclusivity and no partnership with the brand owner. We are an independent trader in genuine EU-produced stock, and everything we sell leaves in the packaging the manufacturer put it in. Terms, payment and the split of responsibility are set out under Incoterms and payment terms; note that EXW is our Madrid premises, not the port.

Building the rest of the container

Cola anchors the order and the remaining space is where the shipment earns its freight. Most buyers add a citrus line and a fruit line on the same booking, and Sprite and Fanta are the usual pair, covering the two decisions a shopper makes immediately after rejecting the cola. Because a beverage load runs out of weight before it runs out of cube, there is normally usable space left over, and it is worth filling with something light rather than shipping air. The beverages range shows what is currently moving out of Madrid, and mixed-brand and mixed-category pallets are standard rather than an exception.