Coca-Cola Hellenic Opens New €130m Irish Facility
Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company’s Irish business has officially opened a new energy efficient bottling plant, computerised warehouse, and community-focused visitors centre at Knockmore Hill, County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The €130 million facility employs 600 people and has the capacity to produce a wide range of non-alcoholic beverages for delivery throughout the entire island of Ireland.
The facility operates seven filling lines – four for PET bottles, one for glass, one for cans, and one for post-mix. There is a PET moulding unit with six blow moulders capable of handling 750,000 bottles per day.
In addition, the complex features a fully automated warehouse which not only provides efficient storage and retrieval, but also gives better protection to containers and pallets, improves handling times and ultimately is designed to deliver a ‘perfect’ pallet to customers, and a high quality beverage into the hands of the end consumer.
A key component of the new bottling plant is a combined heat and power (CHP) system, which has been constructed in partnership with ContourGlobal, a leading international company specialising in the development of efficient energy installations.
The CHP plant at Knockmore Hill will cut CO2 emissions at the plant by up to 66% while supplying excess clean electricity to the local power grid. The plant is the fourth to be officially opened and another 11 are under development by ContourGlobal, as part of Coca-Cola Hellenic’s commitment to combating climate change
“Our aim is to cut CO2 emissions by an average of 20% across all 80 of our bottling plants,” says Doros Constantinou, chief executive of Coca-Cola Hellenic.
Coca-Cola Hellenic is one of the world’s largest bottlers of products of The Coca-Cola Company with sales of more than 2 billion unit cases. It has broad geographic reach with operations in 28 countries serving a population of approximately 560 million people.
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Pictured at the opening of facility at Knockmore Hill are (left to right): Northern Ireland Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster; First Minister Peter Robinson; Marcel Martin, general manager of Coca-Cola Hellenic for the island of Ireland; Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness; and chief executive of Coca Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, Doras Constantinou.
