Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages will also more than double its warehouse space at the site.
Operations for one of the largest bottlers of Coca-Cola in the U.S. are set to grow in Fort Worth.
Over the next three years, Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages plans to spend $168 million at its Fossil Creek facility, adding two production lines and growing its warehouse space from 150,000 square feet to 400,000 square feet.
The effort will emphasize the latest technologies throughout both warehouse and production operations. The new lines will center around the sparkling business and also add a capability to allow for different sizes, such as mini cans, to provide a more robust portfolio to customers and consumers.
Jean Claude Tissot, the bottler’s president, said that beyond the digitization, the investment is about what Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages can offer in terms of job creation.
“We need to think about the opportunities for the future, how we will continue to grow, how we will continue to offer job opportunities and how we are going to be state of the art in terms of technology,” said Tissot. “That’s not just in our facilities, but also in our commercial initiatives.”
The bottler, part of publicly traded Mexico holding company Arca Continental, has 1,800 employees across Dallas-Fort Worth between the Fossil Creek campus, its Dallas headquarters at Lincoln Centre, sellers in the field and another warehouse in the Dallas area, among other roles.
Arca Continental Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages' plans to more than double its warehouse alone at its Fossil Creek facility in Fort Worth with its planned investment.(Arca Continental Coca-Cola South).
The expansion at Fossil Creek follows the company’s new $260 million production and distribution facility in Houston. The 1 million-square-foot facility that opened in 2020 helped set the tone for what Fort Worth employees should expect with the integration of new technologies in production processes at the Fossil Creek operation.
“They see the new technology, and they understand the ‘why,’” said Tissot.
Coca-Cola Southwest Beverages’ reach is massive. As the third-largest Coca-Cola bottler in the U.S., it has seven production facilities and operations in Texas, Oklahoma, and parts of New Mexico and Arkansas. In 2022, the bottler estimated it contributed $5.4 billion in economic activity in Texas alone.
While it expects to be able to produce more volume and to grow with its forthcoming Fort Worth push, Tissot, like many other executives, is mindful of the swelling population in Texas and Oklahoma.
The company has been working to help Texans and others understand the Coca-Cola product they consume may have been bottled by a North Texan. That has come in the form of big splashes like Super Bowl ads, and Tissot is looking to the exposure from the World Cup in 2026.
“As companies, we have to realize the opportunity, and we’re going to invest to capture that opportunity,” he said.
Fuente de nota e imagen: https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2024/03/30/coca-cola-bottler-to-invest-168m-in-fort-worth-operations/