While Coca-Cola’s namesake syrup for its flagship soft drink is one of the most well-known trade secrets in food manufacturing, the beverage giant’s other secrets apparently are a little more vulnerable.
On April 22, the U.S. Department of Justice said that a federal jury in Tennessee convicted a Michigan woman of conspiracy to steal trade secrets, economic espionage and wire fraud regarding Coke’s formulas for its BPA-free coatings inside its beverage cans. She was originally indicted in February 2019, with a superseding indictment charged in August of last year.
According to court documents and evidence
presented during her 12-day trial, 59-year-old Dr. Xiaorong You, who
goes by Shannon You, stole the valuable formulation material while
working for the company in Atlanta and at Eastman Chemical Company in
Kingsport, Tennessee. The stolen BPA trade secrets belonged to major
chemical and coating makers that include Akzo-Nobel, BASF, Dow Chemical,
PPG and others, and cost nearly 120 million dollars to develop. more
