THE average Hungarian drinks more Coca Cola than his or her part in California, according to the company's European president, Mr Neville Isdell.
Mr Isdell, from Downpatrick in Co Down, was in Dublin yesterday to launch a national enterprise award sponsored by the soft drinks manufacturer.
Sipping the brown stuff straight from the glass contour bottle, Mr Isdell explained that his aim was to encourage Europeans to drink as much Coke as Americans. And then encourage the Americans to drink more. It has worked in Hungary, where, in the last five years, consumption has gone from 20 bottles a year per person to 135.
The greater European market, which includes eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, accounts for 30 per cent of the company's global profits, he said. It has two major concentrate manufacturers, one in Drogheda, Co Louth, and the other in France.
The figures for consumption per head of population trip off the tongue. Icelanders drink 398 bottles a year, he said. "The only problem is there aren't enough people in Iceland." But the figures for the output of the Irish operation remain a closely guarded secret.
Between the two plants a bottling operation in Dublin and the concentrate factory in Drogheda 900 people are employed. Around 333 of these people, plus 30 contract workers are employed in Drogheda. The factory produces 314 products, ranging from Coke concentrate to mango, strawberry and ginger ale concentrates. These are exported to 77 countries, mainly through the ports on the east coast. Estimates put the out put at around £500 million a year.
The company has applied for planning permission for a storage warehouse and Mr Isdell said growth would continue, although there were no specific expansion plans. "We are a company in aggressive growth mode. We aim for between 8 and 10 per cent growth in sales a year." In the last five years, the company has invested £50 million in the Drogheda plant, he said.
The bottling plant has been operating in Dublin since 1952 and the concentrate factory opened in Drogheda in 1975. Mr Isdell said the peace process had not influenced investment plans, but would hopefully boost the economic fortunes of the 32 counties.
"We're a company that is in 200 countries and we work in more difficult situations than Northern Ireland," he said.
Mr Isdell started his career in 1968 as a distribution manager in Zambia. He had gone to Africa as a 10 year old boy with his father, who worked as a fingerprint and ballistics expert with the police.
Mr Isdell is bullish about competition from that other entrepreneur, Mr Richard Branson, and his Virgin Cola brand. "The history of our industry is one where competition will help drive it."
He said the enterprise award, with a £20,000 prize fund and organised through Dundalk RTC, fitted with the entrepreneurial culture in the company. It also fitted with the marketing policy of factories putting down roots.
"A global brand is fine but you have to be an integral part of the community."
Irish sales last year were "very good", he said. However, the number of bottles drunk a year by the Northern Irish consumer is more than twice that of the Southerner, at 288 servings in Northern Ireland compared to II 7 in the South.
In the States the benchmark, except for pockets like California, is 310 bottles a year. "Ten years ago they said we would never get per capita levels in Europe up to the American level, now a number of countries are ahead of when the US was 10 years ago.
The brand faces competition not only from other colas, he said, but from coffee, tea and even tap water. Coke intake in the States exceeded coffee for the first time in the 1970s, he says triumphantly. The company is looking forward to the day when it exceeds water intake. "Our product first answers a basic physiological need, the need to consume liquid. Our share of that liquid consumption is still low."
