Pepsi Bottling Group Spokane says it will shut down its canned-beverage production line here next month and will begin shipping such products here from a production plant in Seattle.


Twelve employees work on the production line, and 10 of them now will be looking for other jobs, says Rick Cooper, Pepsi Bottling Groups Spokane-based regional sales manager. Four of those employees might move to different positions at the plant, which is located at 4014 E. Sprague, he says. Two employees will retire after the plant ceases its production.


The facility here will continue to be used as a distribution center. The facility, which has operated in Spokane under several different owners since the 1960s, has 100 employees, Cooper says. It distributes 256 products to locations in Eastern Washington and North Idaho. PepsiCo. bought the plant from Seattle-based Alpac Corp. in 1994, he says. Bottling Group was established in 1999 and is PepsiCo.s main distributor.


The 15-year-old production line needed improvements worth $7 million, including environmental upgrades and modifications to the water-treatment facility, Cooper says. It also would have had to modify its can-configuration process. New York-based PepsiCo. Inc., which owns part of the plants parent company, Somers, N.Y.-based Bottling Group LLC, has changed its 12-can packs to a two-by-six can arrangement from three-by-four packaging, he says. The newer plant in Seattle has made that adjustment already, he says.


Cooper says it will be more cost-effective to ship canned-beverage products here from Seattle than to upgrade the production line here. He declines to disclose the Spokane operations revenues.


The Spokane plant was operating at 20 percent of its annual capacity of 5 million cases, while the plant in Seattle is operating at about 50 percent. Can lines across the country are operating at only half of their capacity because consumer demand has shifted from cans to bottles in recent years, he says.


Products currently being canned here are fountain syrup and canned soft drinks, which include Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Mug. The 12,000-square-foot portion of the 60,000-square-foot facility that houses the production line here will be used as a warehouse for other Pepsi products, such as Gatorade and Tropicana soft drinks, Cooper says. Last year, PepsiCo. introduced 100 new products, including lime, vanilla, and diet cherry sodas.


The final day of production here is Oct. 15, he says. Most of the equipment will be sent to other Pepsi bottling locations.