When the timeline of the pandemic of 2020 is complete, March 24 will stand out as a day to remember for everyone from sports fans to anthropologists to cola drinkers. Japan postponed the Summer Olympics that day. India put 1.3 billion people under lockdown. Inhabitants of the U.K. awoke to their first day in home confinement from the coronavirus. The World Health Organization warned the U.S. could become the new hub of the outbreak. President Donald Trump said he’d love to see the country reopen by Easter, just three weeks later.
In the midst of that remarkable Tuesday, the CEO of Coca-Cola Co. described what he saw from the helm of the iconic American beverage company. “The supply chain is creaking around the world,” James Quincey said in an interview on CNBC.
Fast forward a month and some strains remain and some are worsening, particularly in the pipelines for fresh food and medical goods. But just a few days ago Quincey sounded relieved that plant shutdowns were confined to “just a couple of places” and he even congratulated employees for “basically keeping everything running.”
A “great strength” during the disruptions, he said on April 21, has been local production of Coke’s soft drinks and juices. “The drinks in the U.S. are made in U.S. The drinks in Germany are made in Germany. The drinks in Kenya are made in Kenya,” Quincey said. “The local supply chain is then able to work designated as part of the food system, so an essential service, to allow to run the production systems and distribution. So we’ve had some issues on timing of ingredients. Those are much better than they were a few weeks ago.” The same can’t be said of American meatpacking companies that have closed processing plants to contain outbreaks among their workers. Or auto companies with supplier networks sprawling from southeast Asia to eastern Europe that are at least another week away from restarting assembly lines. Or industrial giants like Alcoa Corp. that have to reckon with weak global demand for several more months or perhaps longer.