October 6 (SeeNews) - The German unit of soft drinks producer Coca-Cola plans to close its site in Weimar and relocate parts of its human resource and finance departments to Business Center of Coca-Cola European Partners in the Bulgarian capital Sofia, a company official said on Friday.
"In order to achieve the highest possible standardization within the European overall organization of Coca-Cola European Partners, parts of the Finance and HR departments are to be relocated to the Business Center of Coca-Cola European Partners in Sofia (Bulgaria)," Anja Schenk, Coca-Cola's Public Affairs and Communications officer, told SeeNews in an email.
The company plans to discontinue production and administrative activities from March 1, 2018. A large part of the logistics activities are to be transferred to an external partner as of September 1, 2018.
The planned changes at the Weimar site concern 178 of a total of 223 jobs.
According to the company, decreasing sales volume of refillable PET bottles has resulted in overcapacity in production. The site cannot be operated in an economically efficient manner by bottling merely glass bottles, it commented.