Liz Gyekye / PackagingNews.UK

Coca-Cola invests £50m in its UK manufacturing plants

Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) has announced that it has invested £50m in three of its UK manufacturing facilities.

According to CCE, the investment at its Wakefield, East Kilbride and Sidcup manufacturing facilities forms a crucial part of CCE’s strategy to grow its business while reducing the impact of its operations on the environment, with sustainable innovation at the heart of the £50m programme.

A spokeswoman told PN that this investment “demonstrates CCE’s long-term commitment to manufacturing in Great Britain and will be creating additional opportunities for local contractors for the construction of the warehouse and installation of equipment”.

£30m investment

Approximately £30m is being invested in a new automated warehouse at Wakefield – which Coca-Cola claims is the largest bottling plant of its kind in Europe; since 2009 the site has sent zero waste to landfill and has recently been certified to the new international energy management standard, ISO 50001 by SGS United Kingdom.

The new facility will increase Wakefield’s storage capacity by 102%, which means that products manufactured at the site will be delivered to customers directly, rather than via external warehouses, saving approximately 500,000 road miles per year, according to the company.CCE is also investing £5.4m in a number of projects at its East Kilbride site.

These include the introduction of a new energy-efficient bottle blowing facility that will produce lightweight PET bottles, reducing the amount of PET required, and a state-of-the-art packaging machine that removes the need to use cardboard in the packaging of multi-pack products.

An investment of £15m is boosting production capabilities at CCE’s Sidcup site; a new canning line will raise the site’s capacity by an additional 20 million cases of product per year, according to CCE.

CCE GB managing director Simon Baldry said: “We are committed to manufacturing in this country and are proud that 95% of what we sell is made in Great Britain.

“The £50m investment is crucial to developing our business in line with our fundamental objective to grow more, while minimising our impact on the environment.”

UK manufacturing

This news comes as the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is running a two-week long showcase of the importance of food and drink manufacturing to the economy in this country.

Business Secretary Vince Cable MP said: “I welcome Coca-Cola’s new £50 million investment programme in green technology and their ambitions to grow UK production.

“Food and drink is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK, contributing some £20bn to the economy every year which is 15 per cent of our total manufacturing output.

“This investment is a major signal of confidence in the British economy.”