Newstrack

Coca-Cola develops new fruit juice manufacturing facility at Nabhipur

Preeti Parashar - Chandigarh

Consolidating its position in the Punjab region, Coca-Cola India has set up another manufacturing facility for its fruit juice line at Nabhipur in Rajpura district. The company will manufacture its fruit juice drinks of Maaza and Minute Maid from here and the production is likely to begin shortly. Minute Maid, which was bottled at Coca-Cola's bottling unit in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh will now be rolled out from this new manufacturing facility. The new unit has been established at an estimated cost of about Rs 50-100 crore with a capacity to produce over 20,000 cases of juices per day.

As per senior officials of the company, there is huge possibility that due to immense growth potential in the northern market, Coca-Cola might start manufacturing its juice brands from multiple locations in the future.

Abhijeet Mukherjee, regional general manager, Coca-Cola India said, "We already have a bottling facility at Nabhipur for sparkling beverages producing three lines of products. With this new facility we will add the juice line as an extension to the existing facility. The new unit will have both the hot fill and cold fill facilities for all our product lines. This takes the total number of plants in Northern region to six. The sparkling beverages are manufactured at Baddi, Nabhipur and Ludhiana plants. Amritsar plant has the facility to manufacture both juices and sparkling beverages and we have one water manufacturing plant in Ludhiana."

Coca-Cola in India has already invested over US$ 1.2 billion over the last decade. Going forward, the Coca-Cola system is planning to invest US$ 250 million in India in the next three years to strengthen its distribution and marketing infrastructure.

Expanding further Mukherjee added, "Across India, unit case volume for our company increased by 18 per cent in the quarter ended December 2007, cycling 12 per cent growth in the prior year quarter and increased by 14 per cent for the year."