Financial Times

Dirty tricks in soft drinks!
As new and smaller indigenous beverage companies take on giants like Coke, Pepsi and Elephant House, the competition is not only getting fierce but also ugly!

International Beverages (Pvt) Ltd, a local company which began production last November of three flavours of beverages under the "Fresh" brand, recently learnt that 6,000 of its empties from a Colombo dealer had been removed by a rival distributor.

IBL Managing Director Prins Jayendran told The Sunday Times FT that they have identified the rival distributor but propose to settle the matter amicably. IBL at present is augmenting its dealer network and now distributes 600,000 bottles of its beverages through dealers.

Some tactics in the "dirty tricks" department of Sri Lanka's beverage industry, The Sunday Times FT learns, are taking over bottles of a rival company and destroying it; replacing bottles of a rival with one's own bottles and paying for exclusive selling rights in shops and stores, and shutting out the competition.

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