Coca Cola company claims – still interested in "Next"

The negotiations with Coca-Cola company on procurement of 100% of assets of Fresh & co were not stopped, but the details would be known after negotiations ended, Sanda Parezanović, communications director in Coca-Cola company, announced. In this way, she denied writing of some media that Coca-Cola gave up arrangement with manufacturer of "next juices". Neither one nor the other side wanted to answer when the completion of negotiations, which already lasts for nearly three months (since August 2005), is expected.

According to unofficial information, the reason why Coca-Cola “has second thoughts” are reports of the auditing companies, which “combed” through the financial reports of this Subotica-based company for the last few months and found out that Fresh owes about €30m and that the major part of the debt is the result of "non-host relation to obtained means ".

Let us remind that the company is facing financial difficulties for couple of months, because of big money it owes to international financial institutions. Fresh and Co. is one of the first companies in Serbia that obtained credit in amount of €7.7m from the World Bank, so that it was expected that the company, of which Next juices became one of the best Serbia’s brands on the foreign markets, would continue quick development. However, that money was not used in the best way, because the company from Subotica obtained €12.5m from the European Bank for Rehabilitation and Development to put new factory into operation. on the basis of this credit, EBRD became owner of 32.68% of stocks of Subotica-based juice manufacturer in 2004. Since certain part of money intended for this project found the other use, EBRD Control ordered urgent putting of unit for "pet aseptic" packaging into operation or money back from Živojin Đorđević (the owner of Fresh&co). That is why Đorđević asked and obtained credit worth €12m from Raiffeisen and HVB banks and used that money to buy machines required for functioning of the afforementioned unit. But, EBRD was not satisfied with the situation and, as the owner of one third of the assets in company whose value is over 1.9 billion CSD, it asked for revision of operations of the factory.