PepsiCo has announced plans to invest £24 million upgrading its factory in Lincoln, home of Quavers, one of Britain’s most popular snacks.

The investment will secure the listed building’s future,  see existing machinery at the site replaced by new equipment – including a compact packaging machine – creating training opportunities for employees,  some of whom will be upskilled in using the state-of-the-art equipment and technology.

Already one of Britain’s iconic snacks, Quavers have continued to grow in popularity over the past year and are now bought by nearly one in three households in the UK. The investment will increase capacity at the factory, enabling its team to produce more Quavers to help satisfy this demand, as well as make space for new production lines.

This latest announcement follows PepsiCo’s recent multimillion-pound investment in its Skelmersdale and Coventry Walkers factories to install specialist compact packaging machinery, leading to a 30% reduction in outer packaging on average across snacks multipacks. The new equipment at Lincoln will help remove even more packaging from the firm’s supply chain.

In line with the company’s vision to build a world where packaging needs never become waste, these investments form part of its global commitment to reducing, recycling and reinventing our packaging.

Commenting on the announcement, Nigel Belby, Operations Director at PepsiCo’s Lincoln site, said:

“We’ve always had a strong heritage in the Midlands, providing jobs to almost 2,000 people in the region across our factories in Lincoln, Leicester and Coventry. For decades, our Lincoln factory has brought much-loved Quavers snacks to consumers up and down the country, and with this state-of-the-art technology, we’re confident that the site will continue to serve the nation for many years to come.”

Business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng also welcomed the news:

“It’s brilliant to see PepsiCo doubling-down on its commitment to Lincoln through this significant investment in the city centre factory Walkers has called home for more than half a century.

This investment will help to deliver on our plan to spread opportunity across the Midlands by future-proofing the jobs of the factory’s outstanding employees by training them to use state of the art equipment, and further bolstering the workforce through their apprenticeship scheme.”

Alongside the Lincoln investment, over £1 million has been committed to the firm’s Walkers’ Coventry factory – which produces popular snacks such as Doritos, Wotsits, French Fries, Squares, Sunbites and Cheetos – for additional equipment to maintain production during the work at Lincoln.

The new equipment will be installed at Lincoln in mid-2022, with initial work now underway.