Food and drinks giant completes £14m Leicester upgrade

Food and drinks giant PepsiCo has completed a £14m upgrade of its Southern Region Distribution Centre (SRDC) based in Leicester, making it one of the company’s biggest logistics investments in the UK.

A new building has been established that will increase the storage capacity at site by 29%. The new facility will be used by PepsiCo to distribute Walkers crisps to to supermarkets and retailers.

Previously PepsiCo relied on overspill sites that required crisps to be stored and transported to other locations. Now, more crisps can be stored on-site, taking over 600,000km off the road in transportation.

Andy Smethurst, SRDC site lead at PepsiCo, said: “After two years of planning and execution, our new SRDC building is now open for business, and set to dramatically change our logistics operation. It will create more efficiencies, more capacity, and importantly also take miles off the road so we can reduce our carbon footprint. We’re confident that this will allow us to serve our retail customers with more agility, while also ensuring the future success of our distribution centre.”