Pop goes the bottler!
by Humphrey Dennis McQueen.

The Australian soft-drink industry, 1945-65:
A study in management, marketing and monopolisers.

The soft-drink industry provides a case study of the transformation of the Australian economy in the post-war decades as affluence and mass marketing permeated everyday life.  As the judges of the annual Hoover Marketing Award recognised in 1970:

The soft drink industry is typical of many Australian industries in that, over the past ten years, the structure of the industry has changed from one consisting largely of small, family owned, bottling companies to one which is increasingly dominated by overseas corporations, and in the process it has become sophisticated and highly competitive. (AMP, 1971: 25)

This article looks at the industry between 1945 and 1965 when the first wave of  transformation occurred. The investigation begins with a summary of the scale and scope of the industry before its overhaul. The local responses are  illustrated by sketches of four of the larger bottlers as a comparison with the principal entrant, the Coca-Cola Export Corporation. The discussion then turns to Australian managers and an evaluation of their  marketing. A final part traverses how bottlers responded to chain stores, supermarkets and vending machines. A coda ties these restructurings into the debate over corporatisation and concentration.