Leading beverages company, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) Australia, has officially opened a new state-of-the-art can line at its production site in Moorabbin, Victoria.
Backed by an investment of $43.7 million, the new can line caters for increasing consumer demand for canned beverages; allowing CCEP to scale its local can production and to deliver more beverages, more quickly to customers across Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
The can line is able to produce up to 1700 cans per minute in a variety of formats and sizes, from ‘mini’ 250ml and 375ml cans, through to 500ml packs. This includes popular favourites such as Coca-Cola No Sugar, Sprite, Mount Franklin Lightly Sparkling, Canadian Club & Dry, Monster and Mother Energy.
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Vice President and General Manager of Australia, the Pacific and Indonesia Peter West says: “At CCEP, we adopt a value-chain approach to our operations and continually assess the entire lifecycle of our products to unlock ways we can make, move and sell beverages more sustainably, whilst ensuring we’re continually driving growth for our valued customers.
“This new can line at Moorabbin allows us to make a larger range of canned beverages from across our portfolio of non-alcoholic and alcoholic brands locally in Victoria, meaning our products are closer to the end-consumer. This minimises freight movements and, in turn, helps to reduce carbon emissions.
“We’re also incredibly proud that we’ve been able to further our gender equality ambitions through the new infrastructure at Moorabbin, supporting career opportunities for women in supply chain. More than 50 per cent of the team that work on the new can line are women, and we’ve increased female representation across our total Victorian supply chain workforce by more than three per cent over the past year,” Mr West said.
Boasting the latest manufacturing technology, CCEP’s new Moorabbin can line is the most sustainable production line within the company’s Australian operations and delivers considerable water and energy efficiencies.
Using less water than other existing can lines, the Moorabbin can line is estimated to save the equivalent of more than six Olympic-sized swimming pools of water per year, according to the company.
“It is also anticipated that the site’s energy usage will drop by approximately 160,000 kilowatt hours each year, largely thanks to the line’s ability to fill cans at room temperature; eliminating the energy that is typically required to cool liquid as part of the filling process.”
Coca-Cola Europacific Partners Vice President of Supply Chain – Australia, New Zealand and Pacific Orlando Rodriguez says: “The requirement to move product between states in a country as vast as Australia contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and reducing this is a challenging task, but it’s not impossible. Our continued investment in more efficient infrastructure at our facilities will play a role in helping us reach our net zero targets.”
The can line at Moorabbin is complemented by CCEP’s new-look Distribution Centre (DC) at nearby Mentone, which is now home to a $17.4 million Automated Storage and Retrieval System (ASRS). The ASRS provides 12,000 additional pallet spaces, ensuring the Mentone DC is equipped to support Moorabbin’s increased can production whilst helping to support the efficient dispatch of product orders to customers in Australia’s southern states.
“Combined, the new infrastructure at Moorabbin and Mentone allows us to slash our inter-state freight by more than one million kilometres per year, cutting CO2 emissions by 830 tonnes,” Mr Rodriguez said.
“These two major infrastructure projects work hand-in-glove to help us uphold our commitment great people, great service and great beverages, done sustainably and we couldn’t be more pleased to see them live and operational.”
