With an increasing demand forecast for soft drinks in Pakistan in 2023, PepsiCo’s partner Northern Bottling Company has installed Sidel’s high-volume, high-speed carbonated soft drinks (CSD) line.
Sidel to apply its packaging solutions expertise to create the new complete line for Haidri Beverages Group’s subsidiary, Northern Bottling Company (NBC), in the city of Peshawar. Northern Bottling Company is the market leader in beverages for Pakistan’s northern region and has been a successful PepsiCo franchise for over 25 years.
Offering a capacity of over 45,000 bottles per hour, the line represents a new era of innovative technologies, high efficiency and productivity in Pakistan’s beverage industry. The new line will help unlock further capacity for Northern Bottling Company, which itself has seen volume growth of 30% in the year 2021-2022. It will handle four bottle sizes and five recipes, producing PepsiCo beverages Pepsi, 7up, Mirinda, Pepsi Diet and Sting energy drink, in 300ml, 345ml 500ml and 1500ml formats.
Serving a dynamic market
Sidel is enlarging its local expertise in Pakistan, a dynamic market, where PepsiCo and NBC are playing a significant role.
“Sidel’s absolute commitment to service, along with their unique ability to optimise layout within a high-speed line equipped with cutting-edge technologies has impressed us. These were the key reasons that we have entrusted Sidel with our new investment,” said Ali Navaiz, Group Chief Operating Officer at Haidri Beverages Group.
“We are excited by this collaboration. We’re dedicated to helping NBC achieve its commercial, sustainability and efficiency goals by adding value with our innovative bottle design, and lower energy and resources solutions,” added Vedat Guler, Sales Director Middle East of Sidel.
Sustainable production
Sidel’s complete line will help NBC save energy and resources. In fact, Sidel’s Combi is able to blow bottles using the lowest possible blowing pressure, and the air is recycled. It also offers water savings on bottle base cooling. The line is capable of running recycled PET (r-PET) bottles, and with Sidel’s patent StarLite bottle base, NBC and PepsiCo’s future sustainability goals will be met. The innovative StarLite bottle base optimises the quantity of PET per bottle, contributing to sustainability both by reducing the use of material and lowering emissions during transport.
Reduced Total Cost of Ownership
The company is confident of meeting NBC’s high-performance targets and expectations, knowing that its line engineering and technology, innovative solutions, resource efficiency and packaging design improvements, together with its local service and aftersales support, will add value and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).