It was built in 1989[1] at the Wakefield 41 Business Park in Outwood.[2] From the five years after 2009, Coca-Cola invested over £100m in the plant, and £240m had been invested at the site before 2009. The main office of CCEP is in Milton Keynes. The site was visited by David Cameron, when Prime Minister, in 2010 and June 2014.[3]
The site produces 6,000 cans of soft drinks per minute, which is 100 per second, and up to 2,200 PET bottles a minute (HDPE bottle caps); this works out to up to one billion litres of soft drink a year. The factory can produce 40,000 PET bottles (empty) an hour.[5][6]
Next door is a factory of (former) Rexam, that produces the metal cans.[5] The plant sources its water from the nearby Ardsley Reservoir which is 1.2 miles (2 km) to the west.[7][8]
Structure
It is situated on the north of the Wakefield 41 industrial estate,[9] next to the M1 motorway, about 0.62 miles (1 km) from junction 41. The site has an area the size of 16 football pitches, but when aggregated with the company's own solar farm (1.5 miles (2.4 km) further north), the footprint covers 33 football pitches.[10][11]
