Swire Coca-Cola to bottle more sales with 10-year investment strategy, three new production bases

Swire Coca-Cola Ltd, a bottler of Coca-Cola beverages, will invest more than 12 billion yuan ($1.64 billion) on the Chinese mainland over the next 10 years and plans to expand more production lines in its factories to cash in on the rapid growth of its business in the world's second-largest economy.

"The fast-growing Chinese market is an important growth engine and key strategic market for Swire Coca-Cola, and the company will continue to increase its investment in the country," said Karen So, managing director of Swire Coca-Cola.

The company held a groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday for its new plant in Kunshan, Jiangsu province. With a total investment of 2 billion yuan, the project is the largest single investment that Swire Coca-Cola has ever made on the Chinese mainland, it said.

Swire Coca-Cola has invested no less than 900 million yuan to build a new plant in Zhengzhou, capital of Henan province, and about 1.25 billion yuan to establish a new production base in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province.

The three new facilities are expected to go into operation by the end of 2025, which will greatly improve the company's production capacities in the Chinese market.

So said she is full of confidence in the development prospects of the Chinese market despite some external challenges. "We will add new production lines in our existing factories across the nation in a bid to cater to local demand," So said. At present, Swire Coca-Cola owns more than 100 production lines in 25 factories on the Chinese mainland.

The company will speed up the digitalization push and apply cutting-edge, automated technologies to improve the operational efficiency of its production lines. Its first digital production line of Swire Coca-Cola in China went into operation in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province in 2021 in collaboration with German conglomerate Siemens AG.

So is bullish on the immense growth potential in China's beverage market. It also plans to invest in cooling equipment and enrich its product portfolio to satisfy the diversified demand of Chinese consumers as well as achieve sustained growth, she added.

As the fifth-largest bottling group in the Coca-Cola system globally, Swire Coca-Cola has partnered with The Coca-Cola Co for more than 50 years. It manufactures and distributes soda, tea, coffee, energy drinks and other beverages across the nation.

China's favorable policies in attracting foreign investment, increasingly optimized business environment, vibrant consumer market and increasing demand from local consumers have attracted Swire Coca-Cola to increase input in the country, the company said.

China recently issued a 24-measure new guideline to attract more global capital and further optimize the country's business environment for multinational corporations.

The government's commitment to enhancing the environment for foreign investment includes six key areas, such as ensuring the effective utilization of foreign investment and guaranteeing equal treatment of foreign-invested and domestic enterprises.

Zhang Jianping, director-general of the Beijing-based China Center for Regional Economic Cooperation, said the latest supportive policies to draw more foreign investment, the shortened negative list for market entry and the implementation of the Foreign Investment Law, have all created favorable conditions for foreign businesses to invest in China.

Zhang said China's huge consumption market is attracting an enormous volume of foreign investment, adding that China's new measures to boost its foreign investment inflow have demonstrated the country's confidence and determination in high-standard opening-up to attract multinational companies to participate in China's modernization.

"For the nonalcoholic beverage sector, innovation centered around the drinking experience continues to be the primary catalyst for consumption. Opportunities abound for in-depth exploration in numerous areas, such as exotic fruit flavors, differentiated needs in the context of sugar reduction, texture and visual appeal," said Roolee Lu, senior research analyst at research firm Mintel.