Pepsi Bottling Ventures to Invest $40 Million in a New Plant

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Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources Inc.; Houston, Texas) has confirmed that Pepsi Bottling Ventures LLC (Raleigh, N.C.), a joint venture company between Japanese beverage giant Suntory LTD (Osaka, Japan) and PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) (Purchase, N.Y.) has begun a $40 million investment to construct a new beverage production plant at the site of an existing distribution facility in Garner, North Carolina.

Site work began back in mid August 2001 on a 200,000 square foot production building that will involve the installation of five hi-speed processing lines. Two of the lines will be dedicated to the production of Pepsi soft drinks in bottles and cans. The remaining three lines will produce water, bag-in-box drinks and a pre-mix beverage line.

Stahlman Engineering Corp (New London, N.H.), a leading designer of food and beverage facilities, is providing engineering services and Russell Corporation (Rutland, Vt.) is the general contractor. Plans are to begin beverage production by May of 2002 and utilize the existing distribution facility for product storage and customer distribution.

Pepsi Bottling Ventures is one of the largest Pepsi bottlers in the US. The company was formed in 1999 when PepCom Industries (owned by Japanese Suntory) combined with five PepsiCo-owned bottlers, part of PepsiCo's plan to consolidate its bottling network around a handful of anchor bottlers. Pepsi Bottling Ventures distributes Pepsi soft-drink brands, Aquafina bottled water, Starbucks Frappuccino coffee drink, and Lipton tea. Suntory owns 65% of the joint venture; PepsiCo owns 35%.