"Our plan calls for us to invest close to $3 billion for the next five years. As you can see we are ramping up investments significantly," said Kent, who came to Russia to open a new factory in the south of the country.
The world's largest soft-drink maker, whose brands also include Sprite, Fanta and Powerade, has invested roughly $3 billion in the market since early 1990s.
The new investment comes less than a year after Coke's chief rival PepsiCo made its most ambitious overseas bet by buying Russian juice and dairy producer Wimm-Bill-Dann for nearly $6 billion, in addition to bigger rival Lebedyansky that it already owned.
Coca-Cola had done two smaller acquisitions in the Russian juice market, buying Multon in 2005 and Nidan in 2010, but organic growth accounts for the bulk of its Russian expansion.
"All I can say is that we need to invest today to be absolutely sure that we can capture all that growth that will be there tomorrow," said Kent.
He said low per capita consumption, a big population and growing economy underscored the potential of the Russian consumer market compared to North America and some other mature markets such as western Europe and Japan.
"Three percent of the population of the world live in the United States, 97 percent live outside of the United States, so of course the emerging markets where most of the people live today are going to be a bigger force," he said.
"Therefore you will have more investment where the people live."
In the second quarter that ended on July 1, Russia was Coca Cola's second-fastest growing market by volumes with a 17 percent rise, while China rose 24 percent.
Coca-Cola, together with its Athens-based bottler Coca-Cola Hellenic , currently has 17 plants in Russia, including two juice factories of Multon and Nidan. (Reuters)
