Coca-Cola Amatil (CCA) will close its soft drink bottling plant in the Melbourne suburb of Bayswater over the next 12 months.
The company will relocate production from the small facility in Melbourne to its larger facilities as part of a strategy to boost manufacturing efficiencies and productivity across the business.
“While we regret closing Bayswater, we have flagged driving greater efficiencies from our supply chain as part of our plan to return to growth, which is an imperative," CCA’s group managing director Alison Watkins said.
“I am confident that our policy provides for fair arrangements for those people affected, and we have an orderly transition plan to closure.”
The closure will result in the loss of 57 permanent roles.
The savings generated by the closure of Bayswater, as well as last month’s program to make 100 national supply chain roles redundant, form part of a $100m in cost cutting exercise previously flagged by CCA, Watkins said.
“The closure of Bayswater and relocation of its three production lines to larger facilities will optimise our manufacturing footprint and is an integral part of our plan to reduce our cost base and return CCA to growth.
“We have invested more than $500m in our Australian supply chain over the past five years and we need to make sure we drive the best efficiencies we can to get the best returns possible on our significant investment.
"Streamlining our manufacturing footprint and logistics operations to leverage our scale is an important priority. The savings we generate will support more investment in our brands and innovation," Watkins said.
