Our response to COVID-19

Stepping Up: Our response to COVID-19

At Coca-Cola Amatil, protecting the health and safety of our people and those we work with will always be our overriding priority.

This update is correct as at Tuesday 18 August.

COVID-19 does not change the comprehensive approach already in place to ensure we continue to keep our people healthy and safe, keep producing world-class beverages and keep serving the needs of our customers.

We continue to adjust and respond across all of our geographies - adapting our work rhythms and operations in an effort to focus on business continuity during this challenging time. Our decisions are aligned with advice from the World Health Organisation and the relevant Government Authorities in our countries of operation.

We thank our many customers, brand and business partners across the region for working with us in partnership to continue to meet the needs of our customers and protect the communities in which we operate.

Discover more about how we’re stepping up to COVID-19

In early 2020, Amatil’s Group Leadership Team communicated a set of clear leadership commitments in response to COVID-19. These commitments govern the way our leaders will approach all matters and the many challenging, decisions that arise in connection with the impacts of the pandemic. The commitments were reviewed in July 2020, where an eighth commitment was added recognising the importance of continuing to adapt to the changing environment.

Our leadership commitments:

We can't control what happens, but we can and will control how we choose to respond to this extraordinary change and its impact on our customers, our people and our society.
We are principle-led, and we will:
- protect our people – treating everyone with respect and prioritising their health and financial well being
- support our customers every way we can
- ensure the continuity of our business
We will lead from the front:
- Fit for purpose routines
- Outstanding communicators
- Stay Visible
- Be Calm, positive
- Prioritise Progress over perfection
We will adapt to keep ourselves fighting fit – this means locally led, market-relevant plans and actions that support our changing customer requirements and keep us winning in the market. On big decisions we will take a One Amatil approach which combines the best of common approach, constructive challenge and learnings
While we must rapidly adapt to what’s happening today, we will stay focused on building a better tomorrow – our Amatil Purpose, Values, and Value Proposition, including our sustainability ambitions will continue to guide us.

In close partnership with our Group Leadership Team, each Country team has well-developed plans to ensure all facilities have appropriate measures in place to protect the safety of our people, as well as the partners and suppliers who work closely with us to produce our products and service our customers.

Since the coronavirus outbreak began, we have actively promoted good hygiene and implemented additional cleaning and sanitisation routines across all our facilities. We have also developed cleaning protocols in the event of COVID-19 contamination and provided Personal Protective Equipment to frontline field sales and operations teams. We have also invested in additional support for wellbeing and mental health services for employees, their families and extended access of our Employee Assistance Program to our customers in Australia.

We have also provided clear guidance and information to support anyone who is concerned about potential exposure to the virus, or who is experiencing symptoms.

We continue to keep in close contact with all team members who are undergoing testing or have a confirmed case of coronavirus and we are encouraging any member of our team who is even slightly unwell to remain at home, as prevention is always the best measure and monitor for symptoms.

Our bottling facilities continue to be regularly audited and are fully compliant with the most stringent of global standards and we have separated shifts and introduced virtual shift handovers in our bottling plants.

All cleaning and hygiene routines have been escalated at every Amatil location. In our bottling facilities, there is little people contact with our finished products.

According to the CDC, there has been no known coronavirus transmission through food, and there is “likely very low risk of spread from food products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient, refrigerated, or frozen temperatures.”

Working closely with our suppliers and our brand and service partners, we have detailed Business Continuity Plans in place to ensure that, in each of our countries of operation, our local teams are managing the impacts of the pandemic in a pragmatic and considered way to help minimise the impact of the virus on our own people and operations, as well as the people and businesses that we partner with and serve.

We have plans in place for each of our facilities to ensure continued operations where we can, while also taking all necessary steps to keep our teams healthy. We remain alert and are responding to all in-country government directives as these can and do impact our operations and workforce.

Across our many geographies, our people have been directly impacted along with the rest of the world. In July 2020, Amatil introduced a ‘flex plan’ with clear advice on how different parts of our business should respond to the changing status of the COVID-19 pandemic. The flex plan is reviewed on a fortnightly basis, or in the event of an emergency. As the status changes, so does our response to protect the safety of our people and business continuity.

Our flex plan addresses; team rotations, our approach to sales and customer service, visitor advice, and travel.

Like many businesses, we have rolled-out 'work-from-anywhere' arrangements. In locations where restrictions have eased and community transmission is low, we have implemented Team A and Team B routines, where social distancing and regular sanitising protocols have been put in place to ensure the safe return of our people to our locations on their allocated team week.

We have suspended all international travel and non-essential domestic travel. We have cancelled large gatherings and implemented physical distancing measures designed to protect our people, whether they work in our field-based sales teams, front-line manufacturing or distribution operations.

The routines of our field teams have also been adjusted to enable customer contact via phone and where possible, our field teams are undertaking stock replenishment at major grocery outlets during non-trading hours.

The security of our supply chain is a high priority and we continue to review and monitor these. To date none of our critical suppliers are at risk, and we are constantly updating our forecasts and manufacturing planning to reflect changes in demand across our channels.

To ensure we continue to service our customers and keep our people safe, as part of our contingency planning we have implemented a number of precautionary measures. These include additional procedures and restrictions for all site visitors, additional hygiene and sanitisation routines in all facilities, altered work processes and shift routines to minimise risk and meet demand, contingency build measures for key SKUs and enacting plans with third-party transport providers to protect service capability.

We will continue to support our customers and we will continue to make adjustments in an effort to continue to operate our business.

We monitor daily government directives which determine if and how we can keep our sites operational, and we are communicating with our workforce, customers and partners accordingly.

Given the significant uncertainty in relation to the duration and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we withdrew our earnings guidance issued on February 20.

On 17 April we delivered a market update.

On 26 May we held our first-ever virtual Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and discouraged physical attendance for the protection of all our people and our investor community. We received excellent feedback on our approach. At the AGM, we provided a further trading update which covered the first three weeks in May, and the continued impact of COVID-19 through to that time.

On 23 July we updated the market on a likely impairment to our Indonesia business and we also provided a June trading update.

It is important to us that we provide investors with timely updates on our trading performance and our response to COVID-19. Amatil will continue to do so as appropriate over coming months.