PepsiCo has revealed that it is investing £24m in its factory in Lincoln to upgrade its facilities and meet growing consumer demand for its Quavers brand.
The investment will see existing machinery at the long-standing city centre site replaced by new equipment, including a compact packaging machine.
The company highlighted that Quavers have continued to grow in popularity over the past year and are now bought by nearly one in three households in the UK. The investment will increase capacity at the factory to produce more Quavers, as well as make space for new production lines.
It also follows PepsiCo’s multimillion-pound investment in its Skelmersdale and Coventry Walkers factories to install specialist compact packaging machinery, leading to a 30% reduction in outer packaging on average across snacks multipacks. The new equipment at Lincoln will help remove more packaging from the supply chain.
Nigel Beilby, Lincoln site operations manager, PepsiCo, said: “For decades, our Lincoln factory has brought much-loved Quavers snacks to consumers up and down the country, and with this state-of-the-art technology, we’re confident that the site will continue to serve the nation for many years to come.”
Kwasi Kwarteng, business secretary, added: “It’s brilliant to see PepsiCo doubling-down on its commitment to Lincoln through this significant investment in the city centre factory Walkers has called home for more than half a century.
“This investment will help to deliver on our plan to spread opportunity across the Midlands by future-proofing the jobs of the factory’s outstanding employees by training them to use state of the art equipment, and further bolstering the workforce through their apprenticeship scheme.”
The new equipment will be installed at Lincoln in mid-2022, with initial work now underway.
