Varun Beverages to set up greenfield production facility in Punjab

PepsiCo India's bottling partner Varun Beverages today announced setting-up of a greenfield production facility for select beverages in Punjab.

In a BSE filing, the company said its plans to set-up a greenfield production facility (subject to receipt of necessary approvals) to create in-house production capacity for Tropicana fruit juices, Quaker Oats milk-based Beverages and Gatorade.

Varun Beverages said this facility will be the first fully backward integrated facility in India to manufacture the complete range of above products including carbonated soft drinks (CSD) at a single location.

"Juice market in India is expected to show strong double-digit growth. The setting-up of this production facility is in-line with our endeavour to strengthen our presence in fast growing categories," Varun Beverages Chairman Ravi Jaipuria said.

"The addition of these product categories to our portfolio will result in better asset usage as the seasonality in these categories is relatively lower and will augment our return ratios and profitability metrics going forward," he added.

Foundation stone for this new production facility is being laid by Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh at Pathankot today.

Shares of Varun Beverages were trading 1.11 per cent higher at Rs 644 apiece on BSE.