Pepsi Cola expanding production capacity in S Philippines

Pepsi Cola Products Philippines Inc.is expanding its production capacity in Mindanao, Southern Philippines, the company said on Wednesday.

At the sidelines of the company's annual stockholders meeting, PCPPI chair and president Mickey Yong said the company was earmarking about 1.5 billion pesos (32.26 million U.S. dollars) for regular capital outlays each year but had budgeted another 500million pesos (10.75 million U.S. dollars) for this new fiscal year ending June 2010 to expand capacity outside Luzon.

"We are centralized in Luzon. Last year, we expanded in Iloilo and Central Luzon. This year, our capacity expansion will be in Mindanao," Yong said.

He noted that the company's capacity utilization rate was nearing 100 percent. In Luzon alone, the utilization rate was at about 70 percent of existing capacity.

The company produces about 170 million raw cases of beverage this year. The 500-million-pesos expansion in Mindanao is expected to beef up its production capacity by another 6 million raw cases.

About 80 percent of the company's business still come from the sale of carbonated drinks like Pepsi, 7-Up, Mountain Dew and Mirinda but the non-carbonated business has been growing at 30 percent each year over the last three years or over three times the trend growth of the carbonated drink business, PCPPI senior vice president for manufacturing and logistics Daniel Gregorio said.

The company has a market share of the carbonated drink business and 25 percent of the non-carbonated drink business.

Among its non-carbonated products are Lipton Red tea, Tropicana, Gatorade, Sting energy drink and Propel Vitamin water.

Yong said the company would likely introduce to the market new products such as coconut juice drinks.

<i>Source:Xinhua</i>