CCE Wakefield is a large
soft drink
A soft drink (see § Terminology for other names) is a drink that usually contains water (often carbonated), a sweetener, and a natural and/or artificial flavoring. The sweetener may be a sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, fruit juice, a su ...
s factory in
West Yorkshire
West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...
owned by
Coca-Cola Enterprises
Coca-Cola Enterprises was a marketer, producer, and distributor of Coca-Cola products. It was formerly the anchor bottler for Western Europe and most of North America.
Coca-Cola Enterprises' products included Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, ...
UK; it is the largest soft-drinks factory in Europe (by volume of drinks produced).
History
It was built in 1989 at the Wakefield 41 Business Park in
Outwood. 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
Milton Keynes ( ) is a city and the largest settlement in Buckinghamshire, England, about north-west of London. At the 2021 Census, the population of its urban area was over . The River Great Ouse forms its northern boundary; a tributary ...
. The site was visited by
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
, when
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
, in 2010 and June 2014.
Coca-Cola has six factories in the UK.
Production
The site produces 6,000 cans of soft drinks per minute, which is 100 per second, and up to 2,200
PET
A pet, or companion animal, is an animal kept primarily for a person's company or entertainment rather than as a working animal, livestock, or a laboratory animal. Popular pets are often considered to have attractive appearances, intelligence, ...
bottles a minute (
HDPE
High-density polyethylene (HDPE) or polyethylene high-density (PEHD) is a thermoplastic polymer produced from the monomer ethylene. It is sometimes called "alkathene" or "polythene" when used for HDPE pipes. With a high strength-to-density ratio, ...
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.
Next door is a factory of (former)
Rexam
Rexam plc was a British-based multinational consumer packaging company headquartered in London, England. After spending much of its life as a paper producer known as Bowater, it diversified and became a leading manufacturer of beverage cans. It ...
, that produces the metal cans.
The plant sources its water from the nearby Ardsley Reservoir which is to the west.
Structure
It is situated on the north of the Wakefield 41 industrial estate, next to the
M1 motorway
The M1 motorway connects London to Leeds, where it joins the A1(M) near Aberford, to connect to Newcastle. It was the first inter-urban motorway to be completed in the UK; the first motorway in the country was the Preston By-pass, which lat ...
, about from junction 41. It is about west of the
East Coast Main Line
The East Coast Main Line (ECML) is a electrified railway between London and Edinburgh via Peterborough, Doncaster, York, Darlington, Durham and Newcastle. The line is a key transport artery on the eastern side of Great Britain running broa ...
(ECML). The site has an area the size of 16 football pitches, but when aggregated with the company's own solar farm ( further north), the footprint covers 33 football pitches.
See also
*
Arla Aylesbury
Arla Aylesbury is the largest dairy in the UK; at opening it was the world's biggest dairy, processing over 1.75 billion pints (1 billion litres) of milk per year, around 10% of the milk in the UK.
It is owned by Arla Foods UK which is a subsidi ...
, UK's and world's largest dairy
References
External links
Manufacturing at Coca-Cola UK
{{West Yorkshire
1989 establishments in England
Buildings and structures in Wakefield
Coca-Cola buildings and structures
Commercial buildings completed in 1989
Economy of West Yorkshire
Manufacturing plants in England