published on 08/01/10
Coca Cola Enterprises Ltd has announced plans to invest £13million in a new can line at its UK Wakefield plant, the largest soft drinks manufacturing site in Europe. The investment will increase production by an additional 2,000 cans per minute.
Opened in 1989 as part of an original investment of £90 million followed by a further investment of £150 million, the factory now produces over a million cans of product a day. The new production line will increase the sites capacity from over 66 cans per second to over 100 cans per second.
A new pre-form area is the result of a £6 million investment and will allow the factory to produce its own pre-forms, which are then blown into PET bottles, helping to cut production costs and carbon emissions by reducing delivery miles by 135,000 a year.
The factory has implemented a number of environmental initiatives including introducing sustainable packaging across its product range, working with Rexam to have cans supplied from a factory next door in order to reduce transportation, and now sending zero waste to landfill.
Since it commenced production in 1989 the factory has introduced five additional PET lines, one of which has the largest carbonated filler in Europe producing 1,000 litres of product per minute. Wakefield now produces over 100 million cases of coca cola, diet coke, coke zero and Schweppes per annum.
Stephen Moorhouse, Coca Cola Enterprises Vice President & General Manager for European supply chain said “we are immensely proud of their achievements at our site in Wakefield. Wakefield is our largest factory in Great Britain but is the most energy efficient in terms of energy used for every 1000 litres of soft drinks it makes, and is the first to house its own perform area. This will help remove transportation from the UK’s road s- reducing carbon emissions – and enable the site to work even more efficiently.

Read the full article at Soft Drink International