Coca cola takes over Costa Coffee

The owners of café chain Costa have agreed to sell the business to Coca Cola for €5.4 billion, marking a new era for the global soft drink group.

Britain’s Whitbread Plc, which acquired the company in 1995, said on Friday it had agreed to sell Costa Coffee following a unanimous decision by the company’s executive board.

Coca Cola, one of the biggest soft drink groups in the world and with no experience in hot beverages, will reportedly take over 4,000 Costa locations across Europe and China, including about two dozen in Cyprus.

“Hot beverages is one of the few segments of the total beverage landscape where Coca-Cola does not have a global brand,” Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said according to Reuters. 

“Costa gives us access to this market with a strong coffee platform,” he added.

Costa Coffee opened its first Cypriot store in Nicosia in 2005, by the Symeonides Group of Companies, 34 years after Sergio and Bruno Costa had set up their wholesale business in London.