Pepsi bottler to construct Europe’s largest bottling factory, worth $150 million, in Romania

Pepsi bottling company is investing $150 million (euro105 million) to construct Europe’s largest bottling factory in Romania, officials said Monday.

The industrial unit will be located west of Bucharest, the capital of Romania, and will cover over 30,000 square meters. It will open on Sept.1, 2009.

In 2007, PepsiAmericas took over the group of Quadrant-Amroq Bottling QAB, a Pepsi producer and distributor in Romania.

The two production units for QAB Romania are in Bucharest and the other one in Covasna, in central Romania.

In Soviet communist rule, Pepsi was the only western soft drink that could be bought in Romania. Contender Coca Cola only appeared on the market in Romania after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1989.

Pepsi Company announced previously this month it achieved an agreement to take over its two largest U.S. Pepsi bottlers, Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas, in a $7.8 billion (euro5.45 billion) cash and stock deal.

PepsiAmericas sales were down upto 6 percent in the second quarter to $1.26 billion (euro880 million) compared with $1.34 billion in the same period a year before.