New soft-drink facilities have become a rarity. That put added pressure to do it right with Pepsi Bottling Ventures’ North Carolina greenfield project.
Soft drink bottling is in a state of consolidation, with older plants closing and more efficient facilities picking up the slack. The U.S. has seen only a handful of greenfield projects involving soft drink plants in the last decade. PBV, the third largest anchor bottler in the Pepsi network, had an operation in Winston-Salem that had been expanded and modernized over the years, but its older plants were out of step with the times. In August 2001, construction began on a $40 million, 200,000 sq. ft. facility on 44 acres in suburban Raleigh, N.C., to replace those obsolete plants and jump-start the company’s entry into the bottled water business.