- 4 - Petitioner owns bottling companies known as company bottling operations (CBO's), each of which is a domestic corporation owned or controlled directly or indirectly by petitioner. Petitioner's principal place of business is Atlanta, Georgia. Caribbean Refrescos, Inc. (CRI), is a wholly owned subsidiary of petitioner. CRI produces soft-drink concentrate in Puerto Rico and transfers all of the concentrate for the U.S. market to Coca-Cola USA (sometimes referred to as USA), an unincorporated division of petitioner. Coca-Cola USA sells concentrate, in unchanged form, to CBO's and to unrelated independent bottling companies engaged in producing syrup and selling such syrup to wholesalers. Coca- Cola USA converts the remainder of the concentrate into fountain syrup and sells the syrup to unrelated bottlers and CBO's. Fountain syrup is a combination of concentrate, high fructose corn syrup, and water. Syrup is mixed with carbonated water at retail outlets to produce the fountain soft drink sold to consumers. During the years at issue, the dilution ratio for Coke, Diet Coke, Caffeine Free Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, and Diet Cherry Coke was 1:79.26:515. Thus, one unit of concentrate is processed into 79.26 gallons of syrup, which is further processed into 515 gallons of soft drink. Regardless of the form of the product sold, each sale involves exactly one unit of concentrate. The CBO's that purchase concentrate from Coca-Cola USA convert the concentrate into fountain syrup and sell the syrup toPage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Next
Last modified: May 25, 2011