PepsiCo is set to establish its unit in Meghalaya for manufacturing of its cold drink products.
Today, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma handed over the land allotment documents to Varun Beverages Limited for the setting up of PepsiCo unit at Mendipathar industrial centre in North Garo Hills.
Varun Beverages Limited is one of the key players in the beverage industry and one of the largest franchisee of PepsiCo. The company will invest Rs 185 crore for the plant that will be completed within 12 months.
The products of PepsiCo include Pepsi, Pepsi Black, Sting, Mirinda Orange and others would be bottled and manufactured in the plant.
Besides supplying cold drink products to Meghalaya, PepsiCo will also supply them to Assam and North Bengal.
“With the setting up of this industrial unit for packaging soft drinks like Pepsi, Mirinda and other beverages the lives of people will be transformed as employment opportunities for local people will open up,” Sangma said.
He also informed that soft drinks and beverages that are consumed on a daily basis are bottled in Assam or West Bengal.
“With this bottling unit in Mendipathar we can consume the soft drinks that are packaged in our own State,” he said adding that the company will in future explore the possibilities of packaging drinks and products from locally available products like pineapples also.
Also present during the handing over function were Mendipathar MLA Marthon Sangma, Varun Beverages Limited Chief Executive Officer Kamlesh Jain, Meghalaya Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) chairman James P K Sangma and other officials.
It may be noted that Chief Minister Conrad Sangma had yesterday said that the State government has in the past one week signed nine Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) worth Rs 2,957 crore with various private investors.
The agreements signed are on investment in tourism, food processing, beverages and pharmaceuticals.
Besides Varun Beverages Limited (Rs 100 crore), the companies which signed MoUs promising investments in Meghalaya also include Ramky Infrastructure Ltd (Rs 2000 crore), Polo Towers Group (Rs 465 crore), Quadra Infratel Synergies Pvt Ltd (Rs 100 crore), AI Genix (Rs 100 crore), Lallooji & Sons (Rs 100 crore), Sonar Bangla Group (Rs 90 crore), Playmaker Labs (Rs 1.2 crore) and Seven Sister Resources (Rs 1 crore.
The chief minister said the government plans to attract around Rs 8,340 crore of investments through incentives of Rs 700 crore and SGST reimbursement under the Meghalaya Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (MIIPP) 2024.
The State government has recently come up with the Industries Meghalaya Agency (IMA) to streamline the entire investment process. IMA replaces the earlier Single Window Agency.
