Pepsi Bottling Group constructed a new bottle production and distribution centre in the city of Las Vegas in Nevada, US. The construction commenced in 2007 and was completed in 2008. The plant has been owned by PepsiCo since the acquisition of Pepsi Bottling Group in February 2010.
The $100m facility is located near the north east corner of Rainbow Boulevard and Sunset Road, adjacent to the 215 Beltway. It has a design and layout similar to PepsiCo’s Wytheville bottling plant which was opened in 2004.
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The Las Vegas plant has two buildings with a total floor area of 387,400ft². One of the buildings serves as a warehouse and distribution space, and the other as a production unit.
The plant is custom built and manufactures small-PET bottles in three production lines. It also has a dedicated water line, 167,000gal under effluent tank and a fountain bag-in-box line.
The facility will receive business and tax incentives of $4.5m for a period of ten years from the Nevada Commission on Economic Development (NCED), a state agency providing financial support and assistance to communities to become self reliant.
The new facility is believed to have created 34 full-time jobs with benefits.
Contractors involved in PepsiCo’s project
The plant was design-built by Lexington-based Gray Constructions who have been involved in the other Pepsi projects as well. The Las Vegas plant is supposed to be the largest project undertaken by Gray Construction.
Cox Kliewer of Virginia is the main architect of the plant. They were the architects for PepsiCo’s Wytheville Bottle facility as well.
Denver-based company Conception to Reality was the design, procurement and management contractor of the processing equipment.
Construction of the new bottle production and distribution centre
The new bottling and distribution centre is built on 35.2 acres of land. The construction involved excavation of more than 200,000 cubic yards of caliche rock.
The conventional steel structure is built of load-bearing insulated and textured concrete pre-cast walls and Forma wall metal panels.
Benefits of the new plant
PepsiCo already enjoys more than 60% of the beverage market share in the Las Vegas. The site was chosen as it provides unique business opportunities to the company.
The city of Las Vegas has grown tremendously in terms of population and is also a global destination for tourists. Adding to PepsiCo’s advantages is the abundant supply of water which is required in the bottle manufacturing process.
To further increase its market share in Las Vegas, Pepsi Bottling Group signed exclusive fountain, can and bottle soft drink supply contracts with Riviera, the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian, the Fremont street Experience and the Hooters Hotel and Casino.
The Wytheville facility
The Wytheville production facility is the first greenfield facility built by Pepsi Bottling Group in over a decade. The plant manufactured 30 million cases in its first year.
Spacious interiors of the plant facilitate ease of work flow and maintenance. The layout is designed to optimise the product and traffic flow.
All the factory wiring comes from a single source, which allows for single point of control. This centralised control system allows the workers to monitor and address operational problems quickly.
The production building has four production lines with a 19-bay configuration. The state-of-the art, fully automated syrup room and CIP system was built by Cortez.
The Graphic Packaging fridgemate machine, a ring-carrier applier, Torque cap test system and Kisters shrink wrapper provide adequate flexibility and secondary packaging options.
The floor of the warehouse building is designed for multilevel racking system to facilitate expanded warehouse capabilities.
The Wytheville plant won the ‘Plant of the Year’ award in its second year of operations by Beverage Worls for its innovative design that provided operational excellence.
