ATLANTA — The Coca-Cola Co. and eight bottling partners have closed a $137.7 million venture capital fund to invest in early-stage companies developing sustainable solutions that may help reduce the Coca-Cola system’s carbon footprint.

“This fund offers an opportunity to pioneer innovative solutions and help scale them quickly within the Coca-Cola system and across the industry,” said John Murphy, president and chief financial officer of The Coca-Cola Co. “We expect to benefit from getting access to emerging technology and science for sustainability and carbon reduction.”

Areas of focus include packaging, heating and cooling, facility decarbonization, distribution and supply chain. Greycroft, a seed-to-growth venture capital firm, will manage the Greycroft Coca-Cola System Sustainability fund. Since its inception, Greycroft has raised more than $3 billion in capital and has made more than 400 investments across consumer, enterprise, health technology and finance technology sectors, according to the company.

“The market for sustainable supply chain and manufacturing technology has continued to grow as consumer brands rise to meet the demands of environmentally conscious customers,” said Dana Settle, co-founder and managing partner of Greycroft. “Greycroft has an ‘invest anywhere’ approach that we believe allows us to identify promising startups with climate tech solutions ready to scale.”

Coca-Cola and the participating bottlers represent nearly half of the Coca-Cola system volume around the world. The fund builds on a history of investments in sustainability projects across the company’s global operations.

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