PepsiCo to open £187m sustainable manufacturing plant in Poland
Set to be completed by 2025, the new plant will be the equivalent of seven football pitches in size and will be built in a 30-hectare plot located in Swiete close to Sroda Slaska. The plant will provide the extra capacity to respond to the rapid growth in the company’s foods portfolio, which includes brands such as Lay’s fried and Oven Baked chips, as well as Doritos corn chips.
The new plant will be fully self-sufficient generating energy via solar panels, with plans to introduce an onsite solar farm in the future. Heating, cooling and water at the site will also be reused and rainwater will be collected for use on-site.
Potato waste will also be put to work, with leftover peelings used in a special biomass generator to help power the plant and then afterwards they will be converted into a low carbon fertilizer which will be provided to farmers to help grow the company’s next crop.
‘Latest green technologies’
PepsiCo Poland chief executive Michał Jaszczyk said: “We are proud that the new project will make use of the latest green technologies.
“We are already using 100% wind energy to power all four of the existing plants and the HQ in Warsaw, with additional solar panels placed in selected manufacturing plants. These innovations will make Sroda Slaska carbon neutral by 2035.”
The crops for the new manufacturing plant will be supplied by Polish farmers working in close collaboration with PepsiCo under the Polish Sustainable Farming Program.
New corn supplies
In addition, the company will initiate new relationships for corn supplies, seeking to source up to 27,215 tonnes of corn for the manufacture of Doritos chips by 2027. With the new facility now in construction, PepsiCo will significantly expand the Polish Farming Program to cover 7,500 ha and over 100 farms in the coming years.
“We are happy for PepsiCo’s strategic choice of Sroda Slaska, and strongly believe that our collaboration will be mutually beneficial,” said Adam Ruciński, Mayor of Środa Śląska.
“It will ensure good and stable employment for hundreds of people from the vicinity of Sroda Slaska or even the Wroclaw metropolitan area and will also provide the farmers from our sub-region with the opportunities to deliver high quality produce and fair incomes.”
Meanwhile, Winterbotham Darby is to open a second plant-based manufacturing facility at its Milton Keynes production site, as part of a £5m investment into its meat alternative brand Squeaky Bean.
