Secret in a bottle

Type in Coca-Cola, innovation lab and Brussels, or any combination of these into a search engine on your computer and I can guarantee that you won’t find what you’re looking for.

Frustrating as this might be for a journalist trying to do some research before visiting the facility in question, it shouldn’t come as any surprise. While Coca-Cola’s products might be plastered over billboards across four corners of the globe, the developers responsible for creating them have kept a somewhat lower profile. Until now.

Last month, the world’s most iconic brand finally broke with decades of tradition and let the media into its innovation lab in Brussels, the heart of its European research and development (R&D) operation and about as close as you’re likely to get to finding out why Coca-Cola is it.

But eager hacks hoping to stumble across the secret recipe for Coke or the next functional drink in the drinks giant’s stable, probably left feeling a bit short-changed. R&D director Marcelo Silvado’s enthusiasm for his work is almost unparalleled, but he doesn’t give much away.

Silvado joined the company as a student in Brazil 20 years ago and enjoyed it so much, he never left. Known as Willy Wonka by colleagues, he skips around the centre, one of six such facilities around the world, like an excited schoolboy, providing a whirlwind tour of laboratories, tasting booths and ‘sunshine simulators’ (so you can see what happens when you leave your can of Fanta on the beach all day).

His crack team of 44 nutritionists, bio-engineers, chemists and sensory scientists worked on a whopping 632 projects in 2004, of which 354 made it to market - a pretty impressive strike rate.

With briefs coming in thick and fast from 108 countries across Europe and Africa, speed is of the essence, says Silvado. “We can develop a prototype four weeks after getting the brief.

“The process is simple. We explore the market, see what the flavour houses have, check what the legislative requirements are in the target markets, develop a prototype, subject it to a series of shelf-life and stability tests, and put it out for consumer testing.”

Packaging and design is done concurrently by a 10-strong in-house team and some third-party designers and packagers.

The workload has shot up since the laboratory was moved from Germany to Belgium in 2000, says Silvado. “The average number of projects per country has grown from 2.2 in 2001 to 5.8 in 2004.”

Health, functional drinks and anti-oxidants are the buzzwords in 2005/6, he says. Water is also big, with new launches in Europe and Africa up from seven in 2002 to 23 in 2004.

An often overlooked fact is that while brands have global appeal, products do not, he points out.

“There are 16 different formulations of Fanta Orange alone. Tastes are very different in different markets.”

Sampling is a crucial part of development work, with more than 200,000 bottles of juice, dairy drinks, teas, waters, sports and energy drinks and powders leaving the facility for consumer testing each year.

But there is also a pool of guinea pigs closer to home.

“This building has 2,000 staff,” says Silvado. “Only 400 are employed by Coke, which leaves another 1,600 people to taste our drinks. It’s perfect.”

The professional testers have to be a little more discerning, however, needing four months of specialist training so that they can rely on their judgement when they say: ‘I’m getting a hint of lime.’

So where do all Coke’s ideas come from?

Most start with a brief from a local division, some come from consumers, and some from a sudden burst of inspiration at the coffee machine from a member of the R&D team, he reveals.

“We had a fantastic idea yesterday. But I’m not going to tell you what it is!” FM