PepsiCo Opens New Food Manufacturing Plant to Fuel Growth in China

PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP) announced Tuesday the opening of a new food manufacturing facility in Wuhan, China. The plant, which is PepsiCo's sixth food manufacturing site in its Greater China Region, is part of the company's plans to drive the continued growth of its China business and expand further into central and western China.The Wuhan plant is the first foods facility built by PepsiCo in China in line with the criteria established by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, the world's leading green building standard. With state-of-the-art technologies and processes, the plant is expected to use 30 percent less water and 20 percent less energy compared to the 2006 baseline for PepsiCo China Foods manufacturing plants, reducing operating costs in the long term. Three existing plants in PepsiCo's manufacturing network in China are LEED-certified: Pepsi bottling plants in Chongqing, Nanchang and Kunming.The PepsiCo plant in Wuhan, which includes 25,000 square meters of production space, is equipped with one of the most advanced potato chip production lines in the world and has the capacity to produce approximately 15,000 tons of Lay's potato chips annually. Lay's is the world's largest food brand and China's top-selling chip brand.