Pepsi Bottling Group Expands Virginia Bottling Plant

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas). Pepsi Bottling Group, Incorporated (NYSE:PBG)(Somers, New York) is currently installing a new production line at its New River Valley bottling plant in Wytheville, Virginia. The 354,000 square-foot plant was opened in mid-2004. (See Related Article October 2, 2002 news article - Pepsi Bottling Group Plans New Plant on East Coast)

PBG has selected the Sidel Group (Norcross, Georgia) as the turn-key equipment vendor for the $17 million project. Sidel began installing the small-bottle PET bottling line in early 2007. The line is expected to be running by mid-2007. This will be the fifth production line at the plant. There are currently two PET bottling lines, one can line and one bag-in-box line. PET bottle sizes range from 12-ounce to 2-liter. Cans are 12 ounces, and bag-in-box packages are 3 and 5-gallon. The plant has the capacity for one more line to be installed before the building must be physically expanded.

The New River Valley plant incorporates several advanced features, including high-speed, self-cleaning filling machines, robotic systems that load and unload raw materials and finished product, and a variety of sophisticated packaging systems. The existing small-bottle PET bottling can fill 1,200 bottles per minute, and the filler uses volumetric filling to achieve fill-height consistency. The large-bottle PET line has the ability to fill 350 2-liter bottles per minute. The can line has a line speed of 1,200 cans per minute, and the bag-in-box line fills 3,600 gallons of syrup per hour. All four robotic palletizing lines in the New River Valley plant are completely automated.

The plant serves customers in eleven states and fills several Pepsi brands, specifically Pepsi-Cola, Diet Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Sierra Mist and Aquafina water. The plant operates 24 hours per day and employs 200 people. The New River Valley plant was named “2005 Plant of the Year” by Beverage World Magazine.

Pepsi Bottling Group, Incorporated is the world's largest seller, manufacturer, and distributor of Pepsi-Cola beverages with operations in the U.S., Canada, Greece, Russia, and Spain.

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