US group Coca-Cola plans to invest US$140 million in Mozambique as of 2013 to increase its soft drinks production in the country, the company’s chief executive for Mozambique, Simon Everest said in Chimoio Friday.
Of that amount, US$20 million will be invested in 2013 in installing a new production line for soft drinks in plastic bottles at the Chimoio factory, work for which will begin in January.
Remaining investment will be used to build a new soft drinks factory, starting next year, in the Matola-Gare neighbourhood in Maputo province, Everest said, cited by Mozambican news agency AIM.
The group’s biggest production unit is in the Machava neighbourhood.
The Coca-Cola factory in Chimoio only has a single glass bottle production line and soft drinks in plastic bottles come from Maputo from where they are distributed to the central region of the country.
With the factory now being built in Matola-Gare, with three production lines, which is the same number as in the Machava factory, current production of soft drinks in Maputo is set to double.
Coca-Cola (Moçambique), which has been in the Mozambican market since 1994, is the country’s largest soft drinks supplier and has three factories, the third of which is located in Nampula, in northern Mozambique.
