Read the final statement published by the NCP 19 December 2022: English

On 17 October 2022, former employees of Bralima, an authorised manufacturer and distributer of Schweppes branded products in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, submitted a specific instance to the Irish NCP alleging that Schweppes Holdings Limited (SHL), an Irish subsidiary of the Coca Cola Company, had not observed the Concepts and Principles (Chapter I), General Policies (Chapter II), Human Rights (Chapter IV), Employment and Industrial Relations (Chapter V), and Taxation (Chapter XI) provisions of the Guidelines.

The submitters alleged that Bralima unlawfully terminated their employment contracts, their dismissals were unjustified, procedurally irregular, contrary to DRC law, and the company failed to pay them the requisite compensation. The allegation against SHL is that it breached the Guidelines in its failure to conduct due diligence and remediation in its ongoing business relationship with Bralima.

Similar complaints were submitted to the Dutch NCP in 2015, 2018 and 2019 against Heineken N.V. based in Amsterdam, and to the US NCP in 2020 against The Coca Cola Company based in Atlanta. These cases have been addressed and closed. The submitters confirmed that, aside from the company to which the case was addressed, the submission contained no new information not included in the aforementioned specific instances handled by the Dutch and US NCPs.

On 19 December 2022, the Irish NCP published a statement deciding not to accept the specific instance on the basis that the same information had been submitted to other NCPs on multiple occasions and had already been addressed. The Irish NCP therefore closed the specific instance of the procedure as there was no evident reason for reassessment of the issues.

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