A Northern Ireland bottling franchise of giant soft drinks maker Coca-Cola had turnover of £335.8 million (€402million) in 2023, up by 15.3 per cent from its turnover of £291.2 million the year before, new accounts show.
More than half of that turnover was from the sale of soft drinks in the UK, totalling £175.9 million, with the remaining £159.8 million related to intercompany sales to other Coca-Cola companies in the Republic of Ireland.
The company also paid dividends totalling £25.9 million to its Swiss parent company, compared to £26.6 million the year before.
Coca-Cola HBC Northern Ireland employed 482 employees at the end of 2023 and had a total wage bill of £31.5 million.
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Its directors were paid £715,919 in total, with the highest paid director getting an aggregate package of £236,759.
The company’s pre-tax profit was £43.6 million, compared to £37.6 million the year before, and its accumulated profits stood at £113.8 million, compared to £101 million the year before. It paid tax of £3.8 million, compared to £2.4 million the year before.
It had stocks worth £10.7, made up of ingredients and finished goods, and its debtors owed it £68.1 million, of which £28.8 million was from related entities within the Coca Cola group.
In turn it owed its creditors nearly £194 million, including nearly £130 million owed to other entities within the group, £14.2 million to trade creditors, and £27.1 million in accruals.
The company valued its tangible assets at £269.4 million, including £103.2 worth of buildings, land, plant and equipment, and £166.2 million worth of investments in subsidiary companies.
That subsidiary company is Coca-Cola HBC Ireland Limited, which had turnover in 2022 of €284.2 million, accounts showed. It had a pre-tax profit that year of €32 million.
The Coca-Cola Company is a shareholder in Coca-Cola HBC, the parent company of the bottling franchise, with 21 per cent of its shares. Separately, Coca-Cola also has a number of wholly owned subsidiaries in Ireland, most notably European Refreshments Unlimited Company. Recent accounts for European Refreshments showed it had turnover of €6.1 billion in 2023, up from €5.5 billion the previous year. The company had a pre-tax profit of €2.1 billion, compared to €1.4 billion the year before. It had a tax bill of €356.1 million.
Accounts for the company also show that the Drogheda-based subsidiary paid a dividend of €2.7 billion dividend to a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, which is the largest payment the company has made to date.
Since 2016, European Refreshments Unlimited Company, the Irish subsidiary, has sent €12.2 billion in dividends to the Cayman Islands.
The drinks maker has been accused of hiding “astronomical” profits by US tax authorities, which has emerged as part of Coca-Cola’s decade-long dispute with the Internal Revenue Service, the US tax authority, over $16 billion in back taxes, which it has been accused of hiding offshore by using a variety of jurisdictions, including Ireland.
This story was updated on October 17th, 2024 to reflect that Coca-Cola HBC Northern Ireland is a franchise rather than a subsidiary of Coca-Cola
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