At an investor event hosted Thursday by Barclays, Coca-Cola CEO James Quincey said the company’s recently announced reorganization centered on three strategic blocks – portfolio curation, further transition to a marketing model, and development of a platform services “backbone” immersed in digital capability. The comments followed a series of recent announcements since Aug. 28 setting out a massive global reorganization. At the Barclays event, Quincey said the new structure will help accelerate the “curation” of brands “where we have quality leadership,” within a portfolio that had ballooned to more than 500 brands. Coke also wanted to move faster toward a more marketing focused organization as Coke sought momentum coming out of the COVID-19 crisis, he said. The need to be effective across market borders “as the world digitizes” was another driver. “If you want to drive that agenda, you can’t have as many people making these many decisions,” Quincey said.

LEADERSHIP. Last week, Coca-Cola named leaders for much of its new structure. Operations now will be focused under nine geographical units, instead of 17. North America and Latin America will remain standalone units, while other regions will be shuffled. Europe will become a single operating unit, as will Africa and Greater China. South Korea will be paired with Japan, which had been solo. The remaining operational units will be Eurasia & Middle East, ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) & South Pacific, and India & Southwest Asia. Most of these changes take effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

ORG CHART. Included with this story is a chart depicting the announced changes and leadership as they are expected to be as of Jan. 1, 2021. The graphic includes positions where leaders have yet to be announced.

PLUS, COSTA COFFEE CUTS. Coca-Cola-owned Costa Coffee announced that it would eliminate as many as 1,650 jobs in the UK as it adjusts to lost business amid the global pandemic. The company also has shut down 40 cafés since August in China, where it had about 400 stores. More will be closed by January 2021, the chain told the South China Morning Post.