Coca-Cola Amatil fights for $80m coal bonanza

Coca-Cola Amatil told the ASX in 2020 that $80 million worth of royalties had been received since 2014 and it had been recorded as “other revenue”.

According to reports, Coca-Cola European Partners, which acquired Coca-Cola Amatil for $7.7 billion last year, has been looking for a buyer of the coal asset, which the company has now confirmed.

“The ownership of these property rights is not part of CCEP’s core business and remains under review to ensure alignment with our long-term business strategy,” said the spokeswoman.

With coal prices hitting record highs above $400 a tonne recently, the stakes are higher than ever.

According to the court documents, APD receives royalties starting at 7 per cent of the sales price of the coal sold if it is below $100 a tonne. The royalty peaks at 10 per cent of the sales price for any amount above $225 a tonne. Rolleston Coal Holdings, the mine operator, paid out $68 million in royalties in the 2021 calendar year alone, some of which would have been earmarked for APD.

“Amatil intends to defend APD’s rights to all royalty income, past and future,” Coca-Cola Amatil said in a statement to the ASX in 2020 when the dispute first surfaced.

Parties to the dispute were not commenting ahead of the court case.

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“The matter of the royalties is currently before the court in Queensland, and as such, we are unable to make any further comments about the case,” said a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola Amatil.

Glencore declined to comment. A spokesman for Queensland Treasury declined to comment, other than to state the matter is ongoing.

The coal assets date back to CCL’s corporate legacy as a conglomerate with many business interests, including tobacco.

Coca-Cola Amatil was set up under the name British Tobacco Company (Australia) in 1904 as the local arm of what is now the £77 billion ($136 billion) British American Tobacco plc.

Coca-Cola Amatil says the coal rights date to the 1980s when the group, then known as Amatil, operated five businesses: tobacco, beverages, snack foods, poultry, as well as communications and packaging.

“This land included the rights to minerals beneath the surface including coal. While the surface land was sold in the late 1980s, Amatil’s subsidiary, APD, retained the sub-surface strat and associated mineral rights.”

In 1989, Amatil announced plans to sell its tobacco interests to major shareholder BAT Industries – a subsidiary of the British tobacco giant which had been a controlling shareholder since Amatil’s inception.

US soft drinks giant Coca-Cola acquired a 40 per cent shareholding in the group that would focus on its beverage interests including the Coke brand.

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