Coca-Cola, Apple and IBM lead Interbrand’s 13th annual Best Global Brands report. While Coca-Cola retained its #1 position, Apple jumped to #2 with stellar sales in both developed and emerging markets over the last year. Social media giant, Facebook (#69), enters the report after making headlines as the third largest IPO in US history, and Google (#4) experienced a 26% increase in brand value over the last year, exceeding rival Microsoft’s (#5) brand value for the first time in the history of Interbrand’s report.
Tetra Pak has inaugurated a Coconut Knowledge Centre and completed a €42 million (S$67 million) investment to upgrade and expand its operations in Singapore, which includes a state-of the art printer and new building. The investment is designed to meet customer needs across the growing Southeast Asian market and to improve the company’s competitiveness in other parts of the world.
California Craft Brewing Association (CCBA) President Steve Wagner of the Stone Brewing Company says the state’s craft brewing industry generated approximately $3 billion in total impact to the California economy in 2011. California’s craft brewers also created more than 22,000 jobs in a state still facing double-digit unemployment.
With an investment of $5 million in a new plant, the manufacturer and bottler of Big Cola soft drinks plans to increase its market share. Ajecen del Sur, founded on Peruvian capital, has managed to get its main brand Big Cola, third in the ranks of sales of soft drinks in the Costa Rican market, behind the traditional Coca-Cola and Pepsi. (Costa Rica Star)
The politically well-connected California billionaires who built POM Wonderful into a pomegranate juice powerhouse have lost their latest challenge to federal regulators, but the fight isn't over yet. (The Sacramento Bee)
Can the latest fad for wine enthusiasts possibly come from an eastern European country whose wine-growing traditions are as old as Christianity? (Reuters)
