Coca Cola teaching the world to sing to a green tune

WHEN it comes to capital investment, you can’t beat the real thing.

Coca Cola Enterprise’s £30m investment in a fully automated warehouse at Wakefield represents “a massive statement of intent” for the manufacturing site, according to the soft drinks giant.

The investment doubles storage capacity and is part of a wider £100m programme to develop the bottling plant, the biggest of its kind in the world outside South America.

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The West Yorkshire plant is also one of the ‘greenest’, sending zero waste to landfill since 2009.

Ian Johnson, operations director at Wakefield, told the Yorkshire Post that the new warehouse “is all about the long-term future of this site”.

The warehouse – described as an automated storage and retrieval system – will be capable of handling 30,000 pallets when up and running by October 2013.

It will increase efficiency at the plant, which produces around 100m cases of soft drinks a year, including Coca Cola, Fanta, Sprite, Oasis, Schweppes, Dr Pepper and Relentless.

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“As we have grown we have used outside stores,” explained Mr Johnson. “It means double handling. Then when a customer needs it, we have to take it out and ship it again.

“Direct to the store deliveries will virtually double from here. We will be in excess of 80 per cent direct to customers. That will take 500,000 road miles off the road.”

The 18,000 sq ft warehouse will not add any new jobs to the overall workforce of 520 at Wakefield. Mr Johnson said: “If you can introduce new technologies but also be growing the business at the same time, that’s what you need to do.”

CCE employs 4,600 people across the UK and supplies more than 100,000 retail customers. It is the bottling partner to the US-based Coca Cola Company, which supplies the secret recipe concentrate and markets the brands internationally.

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Mr Johnson said: “We like to consider ourselves a local company. We manufacture in the countries we sell. We don’t manufacture in the States and ship it across.”

The Coca Cola Company provides two concentrates for Coca Cola and three for Diet Coke, including sweetener. CCE adds Yorkshire Water and British Sugar and packages the products in plastic bottles and aluminium cans. The site has three can fillers which produce 2,000 cans a minute and 100 cans a second when fully operational. It produces 30,000 two-litre bottles an hour.

Its busiest seasons are summer and Christmas, said Mr Johnson. “Christmas being the best one because it happens every year,” he added. “Summer is less predictable,” he said during Friday’s wet weather tour of the site.

Rexam, a can supplier to CCE, has a manufacturing facility directly next door and supplies “through the wall”. Mr Johnson said: “They form the can, print the can, send it across, we fill it and get it into the warehouse.”

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CCE manufactures its own plastic bottles and this year launched a £15m joint venture with Eco Plastics in Lincolnshire to double the UK’s capacity for recycling.

The Continuum plant at Hemswell became the world’s largest plastics reprocessing facility following the investment.

CCE hopes the facility will help it reach the target to use 25 per cent recycled plastic in all its bottles by the end of this year.

Mr Johnson, who sits on the board of the new company, said: “Recycling in Britain could be a bit better than it is. We decided we needed to do something about that. We have all read in the paper about shipping plastic to China. That can’t be the right thing to do.”

CCE invested £5m alongside Eco Plastics’ £10m.

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In another development, CCE has introduced plant-based plastics into its bottles, instead of using oil-based plastics.

“We really believe we are at the forefront of this kind of approach. Not because it’s philanthropic; it’s good business. I have not seen any sustainable projects that do not either increase efficiency or save you money.

“As a company we will accept a longer payback for capital projects for sustainable programmes. This is about doing the right thing and getting the longer-term benefits of those investments.”

Alongside the £30m warehouse investment, CCE has replaced two of its three can fillers over the last three years. It plans to replace the third next year.

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Other capital investment projects include a bottle blower and new chilling systems.

Mr Johnson said CCE is considering a combined heat and power plant.

This would reduce the annual £6m utility bill.

He added: “If we can get a payback on that we will go forward. That will be a tricky one to get through. But we are willing to look at all options.”

@bernardginns