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PepsiCo to invest £24m at Walkers factory in Lincoln
PepsiCo is to invest £24m into its Walkers factory in Lincoln as it looks to upgrade its facilities, meet growing consumer demand and secure the listed building’s future.
The investment will see existing machinery at the long-standing city centre site replaced by new equipment, including a compact packaging machine. These upgrades will create training opportunities for employees and apprentices, some of whom will be upskilled to use the new state-of-the-art equipment and technology.
According to PepsiCo, 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, enabling the team to produce more Quavers to meet this demand, as well as make space for new production lines.
PepsiCo is to invest £24m at its Walkers factory in Lincoln to increase capacity / Picture: PepsiCo
It also follows PepsiCo’s multi million-pound investment in its Walkers factories in Skelmersdale and Coventry 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 even more packaging from itssupply chain.
In line with its vision of a world where packaging need never become waste, these investments form part of PepsiCo’s commitment to reducing, recycling and reinventing packaging.
Nigel Beilby, PepsiCo’s Lincoln site operations director, said: “We’ve always had a strong heritage in the Midlands, providing jobs to almost 2,000 people in the region across our factories in Lincoln, Leicester and Coventry. 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.”
PepsiCo’s factories in Leicester, Coventry and Lincoln collectively employ almost 2,000 people / Picture: PepsiCo
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.”
Alongside the Lincoln investment, over £1m has also been committed to Walkers’ Coventry factory – which produces snacks such as Doritos, Wotsits, French Fries, Squares, Sunbites and Cheetos – for additional equipment to maintain production during the work at Lincoln.
The new equipment will be installed at Lincoln in mid-2022, with initial work now underway.