Prime Minister John Key is to officially open new state of the art manufacturing facilities at Coca-Cola Amatil's Auckland site today (opening planned for 1pm).

The upgrade includes two beverage bottle production lines using world's best practice blow-fill technology and a new aluminium can line.

Blow-fill allows CCANZ to design and self-manufacture its own PET plastic beverage bottles using less raw materials. The $35M Auckland facility upgrade follows the announcement of a $15M investment in their Christchurch plant earlier this year and is part of a CCA Group-wide $450 AUD million investment in blow-fill manufacturing - the largest infrastructure investment for the company in a decade.

The technology is being installed across CCA's production facilities in New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji from 2010-2015.

Blow-fill technology allows CCANZ to redesign and lightweight its PET bottle range, delivering significant cost savings, production efficiency gains and increased product shelf life.

Each new blow-fill line can produce approximately 28,000 bottles per hour.

Coca-Cola Amatil Managing Director George Adams said "blow-fill technology will provide a quantum lift in the company's manufacturing capability in New Zealand. Innovation like bottle self-manufacture heralds a step change in sustainable packaging, delivering changes which are good for the company, our customers and crucially the environment in which live and operate."

The new PET plastic bottles will be the lightest-weight beverage bottles made in the country, and the blow-fill bottle technology will deliver a reduction in the carbon footprint of every bottle of approximately 20%.

A significant portion of the carbon savings is delivered from bottle redesigns which use less PET resin, the elimination of the need to transport empty bottles from the supplier and energy savings on the production lines.

CCANZ estimates that approximately 650 tonnes (or 12%) of PET resin will be saved per annum - the equivalent of 24 million 600ml PET Coke bottles.

CCANZ will be able to deliver the lightest weight PET beverage bottle manufactured in the country and all its carbonated soft drink products (L&P, Schweppes, Deep Spring and all Coca-Cola trademark brands) will be in PET bottles that are 10-15% lighter.

Other raw material savings include reducing the use of secondary packaging; making labels lighter; and eliminating the need for a plastic liner in the closures, or caps, which again decreases PET resin requirements.

Coca-Cola Amatil employs approximately 400 staff in Auckland as part of a 1000 strong workforce nationwide. CCANZ's Oasis site in Mount Wellington has been home to New Zealand's largest soft drink production facilities for 50 years. In 2008 the company opened its $80m high bay automated warehouse. The CCANZ beverage range include brands under licence from The Coca-Cola Company (major brands include Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Zero, diet Coke,�Sprite, Fanta, Glaceau vitamin water, Powerade Isotonic, Mother energy drink), along with CCA-owned brands L&P, Pump and Baker Halls cordials. As an FMCG company, CCANZ also has an alcohol portfolio plus distributes coffee brands Halo, Expressions and Grinders, and well as SPC fruit products.

CCANZ is part of CCA Group, one of the largest bottlers of non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverages in the Asia-Pacific region and one of the five major Coca-Cola bottlers in the world.