The soft drink company Coke Canada has announced a $34 million investment in its Lachine bottling plant.
Posted yesterday at 2:13 p.m.
This investment will be used for the installation and commissioning within a year of a new production line for beverage cans and 32-unit packaging.
The three existing chains produce drinks in plastic bottles and cans, but they are limited to packages of 12 to 24 units.
Meanwhile, 32-can packages for the Quebec and Maritime markets come from its plant in Brampton, Ontario.
According to Coke Canada, this addition of production capacity at the Lachine plant will serve to “meet growing consumer demand” and “the positive momentum it is experiencing in the east of the country, particularly in Quebec”.
This is also a second multi-million dollar investment at the Lachine plant since the sale of Coke Canada to Canadian investors made by the American parent company, in 2018, for a sum then estimated at 800 million.
In 2020, Coke Canada had invested $5.5 million in the modernization of one of the three soft drink production lines at the Lachine plant.
Since then, Coke Canada has been able to produce a range of 120 products in Lachine under the Coca-Cola, Canada Dry, Sprite, Fresca and A&W brands, which are offered in seven container sizes. This includes soft drinks in clear PET-type plastic bottles that are more easily recyclable into new containers.
The total production volume of soft drinks and other beverages at the Lachine plant is equivalent to 25 million cases (of 24 cans) per year. The addition of a fourth production line could raise this volume beyond 30 million cases per year.
As for the workforce, in the Montreal region, Coke Canada employs 150 people at its Lachine plant and just over 400 people at its sales and distribution center located in the east of the city.
“We are actively recruiting to fill several vacant positions in Lachine and Montreal, even before the addition of a fourth production line at the Lachine plant,” said Erika Tremblay, Vice-President for the East. of Canada at Coke Canada, in an interview with The Press.
Coke Canada establishments in Lachine and Montreal operate 24 hours a day, five to six days a week to supply 9,700 commercial establishments in the metropolitan area, and nearly 20,000 throughout Quebec and the Maritime provinces, to Newfoundland.