We know Yorkshire is home to a significant cluster of food and drink manufacturing businesses and here is just one more piece of evidence proving the point: Europe’s largest soft drinks plant is investing £42 million in new automated pick and place tech – just up the road from us in Wakefield. The new automated storage retrieval system will take around two and a half years to build and stand at 38 metres tall to more than double warehouse capacity.
And here’s some numbers: big numbers. The new system will hold and move an additional 29,500 pallets on top of its current 29,000 capacity, whilst reducing the number of vehicle journeys per year by 18,500 – the equivalent of 441,000km. This funding follows a £31m site investment for the installation of a new canning line, capable of producing 2,000 cans per minute, which has been operational since July 2024.