7Up bottling company is one of the leading trademarks that deals with beverages. It produces and distributes carbonated soft drinks such as 7up, Mirinda, Pepsi, Teem, Mountain Dew, H2oH!, Lipton Ice Tea and Aquafina premium drinking water.

SBC has nine bottling plants with state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities strategically located across various regions in the country.

The company has been known for the production of beverages alone since 1960 immediately Nigeria got her independence. That’s about 60 years into the business with the production of only beverages.

But in 2020, things take a very unusual turn, the advent of coronavirus pandemic ushered in unbecoming decline into the economy, several of them have to denigrate their high profile reputation to still keep in touch with their customers. 7Up introduced a hand sanitizer christened ’2Sure’ to cushion the effect of the pandemic on the people, life especially. The only bottling company to do so.

2Sure Hand and Surface Sanitizer is a liquid sanitizer that sanitizes both hands and surfaces. It contains 70% alcohol and is effectively proven to kill 99.9% of germs.

Although, statistics revealed that the sales of hand sanitizers increased by a whopping 600%, with many of them failing to be tested by NAFDAC. Nigerians appear to be uninterested in the test. That Sanitizer can suppress the potency of the virus alone made it the most treasured asset. The price skyrocketed, that which was sold for N250 increased to N900, N1000 and N1200 depending on the location.

One strategic thing about the production is that 7Up made 2Sure hand sanitizers with the bottle similar to that of their other products. This then leaves the forecast that the company might venture into the anti-microbial business in the near time.

Recall that Rite foods and Cocacola created an unhealthy competition for SBC with the production of Big Cola (a Peruvian brand) and Bigi (a Nigerian brand). Bigi launched its CSD beverage into the market in 2016 (barely 4 years ago) with initial six flavors; tailored along the product-lines of the incumbents. Bigi’s market entry was brutal, they changed the market dynamics in terms of volumes and price, forcing the incumbents to either reduce prices or introduce new product variants at lower prices.

These entrants forced SBC to delist many of hundreds of Nigerian shareholders owning various proportions of the businesses along with their foreign counterparts. And it also caused for the lay off of staff members making many to conclude that it is either racism or monopoly of business that is causing for the recent uproar by the management of the company and the affected workers were calling for government intervention.

Could one then attribute the high patronage of those products from Rite foods and Cocacola to the reason SBC is changing its narratives?

As at 11th September, people are no longer scared of COVID-19 as they use despite the surge in the cases. This automatically means that the sales of hand sanitizers might drop by the day and people are not conscious of getting more hand sanitizers like they use to.

Will this then be the end of 7Up 2Sure hand sanitizers or the company will continue to feed on the earnings made from the time pandemic surge?

-brandspur