DAMMAM, 26 August 2003 — The scare in India involving 12 soft drinks bottled by Coca-Cola and Pepsi International has had an impact on the Saudi market as supermarkets, shopping centers and grocery stores report a steady decline in the sales of their products.
Last month an independent Indian group made public its findings on the two soft drink giants and charged that 12 of their products contained pesticides and were not fit for human consumption. The report led to massive demonstrations in India and the Indian government ordering tests of the drinks.
Although the official report has said that the toxic content of the soft drinks was well below the limit deemed safe by India, the damage was already done and many Indians are avoiding the two colas and the companies’ other products.
Chemists in the Kingdom say that the products here are safe and contain no dangerous ingredients. They stress that the problem in India was related to the water and not the composition of the other ingredients.
“Here in Saudi Arabia there is no such problem with the water,” said a chemical analyst in a testing laboratory in Jubail.
It has been a rough time for both the American companies the world over. Last year the two companies were the subject of another controversy in India. Then it was mineral water. It was alleged that mineral water marketed by them contained pesticides, and overnight the Indian government stopped sales until the result of the enquiry came in. The mineral water was also eventually declared safe.
In the Middle East, the two soft drink companies faced a massive boycott due to America’s policy in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, intensified by the war on Iraq.
The management of both Pepsi and Coca-Cola prefer not to comment on the boycott and privately say that it will eventually fizzle out.
But the recent pesticide controversy has caught both companies off guard. There are people who do not want to take any risk and hence stopped buying Coca-Cola and Pepsi. A few supermarkets in Dammam, Alkhobar, Jubail and Al-Ahsa have reported a substantial decline in sales. One of the supermarkets in Alkhobar admitted that some customers asked staff about how safe their products were.
One chain manager of a giant supermarket in Dammam said this was essentially due to extensive coverage of the pesticide controversy in India in the Arabic press. “Normally the Arabic press does not give such extensive coverage to events in India. But the pesticide scare in India was an exception and it did have an impact on the local market,” the manager said.
