For years it played an earnest second fiddle to Coca-Cola and now Pebco Belize the bottlers of Pepsi has closed its doors.
7NEWS has confirmed that the Pepsi bottling plant in Ladyville closed today after a taxing judgement against the company. The Government of Belize sued Pebco for $1.3 million in excise duty arrears. Pebco did not mount a defense within the required 8 days and the government obtained a judgement from the Supreme Court, ordering Pebco to pay $867,762 at the end of July. After Pebco still did not respond, the Attorney General filed an application to crowfoot or take over certain Pebco assets. Another casualty of all this ruction is CEO Francis Gegg, who was terminated by Director Jose Raul Gonzalez in a letter dated August 2nd.
We should note that Pepsi closed down before, in February of 2000 but was resurrected at the time by a consortium of Guatemalan interests, the same interests who have now apparently bailed on this venture.
What does it mean for you? Well if you've got Pepsi pints they're probably not worth anything, and if you've got Squirt, 7-up, Pepsi or Rica, we wouldn't drink it just yet: it may someday be a collector's item. It means much more for Bowen and Bowen limited the bottlers of Coca-Cola products who will now enjoy an untrammeled monopoly where before Pepsi had challenged it seriously in Western Belize. The only challenge to Coca-Cola now are imported drinks particularly those from the Caribbean like ‘Busta’ and ‘Bigga.’