ECCBC bets big on operational and performance excellence to expand into new markets—and become a reference for the industry

Equatorial Coca-Cola Bottling Company (ECCBC), a leading bottling partner of The Coca-Cola Company in North and West Africa, operates in 13 countries with more than 5,000 employees and 250,000 points of sale.

In 2019, ECCBC’s executive team launched a five-year transformation journey to safeguard performance in an increasingly challenging market.

After three decades in operation, the company recognized it was time to reimagine its operating model and invest in its organizational health—that is, the effectiveness of its culture and ways of working in driving sustained performance. For ECCBC, this meant fostering accountability, collaboration, speed of decision-making, and frontline empowerment to ensure that performance improvements would endure.

ECCBC, in partnership with McKinsey, designed a transformation anchored in three areas: boosting productivity, revamping the operating model, and strengthening the culture and capabilities required to sustain performance excellence.

Phase 1: Driving productivity

The journey began with the Gazelle program in 2019, a sweeping initiative to unlock rapid and lasting productivity gains across ECCBC.

To identify opportunities, McKinsey deployed diagnostic tools including the Organizational Health Index (OHI), a research-backed solution for assessing cultural dimensions that drive performance. McKinsey research shows that companies with strong organizational health achieve three times better performance—and can reach sales growth of up to 24 percent, compared with near-zero growth for the least healthy organizations.

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Over 200 ECCBC employees took part in Gazelle, adopting world-class operational practices and strengthening bonds across business units and group functions that had long operated in silos. These changes led to quick impact: by 2020, even at the height of the pandemic, ECCBC had built enough momentum to sustain growth and deliver strong financial performance.

“Gazelle has been fundamental to ECCBC’s success,” says Cristobal Perez, Finance Director at ECCBC. “The program generated synergies and savings equivalent to more than 3 percent of net revenue, enabling us to reinvest in marketing while improving operating margins. The strong growth momentum and market share gains that followed further strengthened our financial position and laid the foundation for the inorganic growth initiatives we undertook in 2022. This level of progress would have been difficult to achieve without the deep transformation driven by Gazelle.”

Phase 2: Revamping the operating model

Building on early productivity gains, ECCBC leaders tackled a deeper ambition: reshaping the operating model to create a simpler, faster, and more market-focused organization.

“Gazelle helped us turn complexity into clarity,” says Imad Harti, Operations Director at ECCBC. “By simplifying how we worked, we became faster, more resilient, and closer to our customers.”

The new model was designed to empower local markets with world-class capabilities while elevating operational excellence across ECCBC’s ten plants and 13 markets. A comprehensive change management plan, sponsored by the executive team, mobilized employees across the company to embrace this shift.

That same year, ECCBC underscored its long-term commitment to Africa by relocating its headquarters to Casablanca.

Phase 3: Unlocking growth through talent and culture

In 2022, ECCBC’s acquisition of bottlers in Algeria and Morocco presented an opportunity for the company to demonstrate its ability to mobilize the operating model to support the integrations. These acquisitions welcomed 1,200 employees across four plants serving more than 50,000 points of sale.

ECCBC adopted a rigorous process, in partnership with McKinsey, to conduct an 18-month integration program following clear principles to protect business continuity and a strong people-and-practices model. The integration office team identified quick wins to demonstrate immediate value, including a leadership development program for more than 50 managers, the harmonization of two IT systems within a year, and the rollout of a country-specific RTM transformation plan in Morocco that ensured seamless business continuity and stronger execution capabilities.

“Thanks to ECCBC leadership’s vision and resilience, and their commitment to organizational health, we were all clear that the transformation’s impact on people was as important to them as its impact on performance,” says McKinsey Partner Mehdi Damou. “Their embrace of expert change management practices made all the difference.”

By 2022, ECCBC was delivering double-digit growth. By 2023, the successful integration of its Algerian and Moroccan acquisitions confirmed that it had built not just scale, but also a cohesive M&A culture to fuel sustained profitability. With a strong cultural foundation in place, ECCBC’s leaders are confident in their ability to seize the next bold opportunity.

ECCBC has seen significant financial, operational, organizational, and employee impact as a result of its transformation journey.

In less than 18 months after the start of the integration, the Algerian business unit significantly improved market coverage with unified operations and experienced a 30 percent performance uplift.

In Morocco, the integration and transformation program’s strong focus on change management enabled the business unit’s 2,000+ employees to reach the top quartile of the global organizational health benchmark.

Employees also took note of the shifts, and one senior manager said, “In my last 25 years of experience, I have seen this organization changing ownership several times and going through many M&As, but this is the first time I witnessed a real integration. In the last year, I have lived a profound change of the corporate culture, and I personally grew as I met with new colleagues from different parts of the same country and beyond.”

The group adopted a cohesive operating model reinforced with over 40 expert talents bringing world-class capabilities to the 13 markets, including supply chain, revenue growth management, transformation and integration, and digital and data.

Beyond metrics, the journey of ECCBC translated into meaningful reach to a wider geographical footprint, where capabilities and business development are now elevated to global standards and supported by an inclusive corporate culture. The company is proud to achieve stronger geographical reach, bringing products and elevated capabilities to underserved regions.