DEERFIELD, ILL. — Mondelēz International plans to invest $190 million in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh to establish the company’s largest manufacturing plant in Asia Pacific. The move, part of Mondelēz’s ongoing supply chain reinvention plan, comes less than two weeks after the company unveiled plans to invest more than $100 million in a biscuit manufacturing plant at its Opava site in the Czech Republic.
The new 134-acre multicategory food campus in Sri City will have annual capacity of 250,000 tons and will be the largest chocolate manufacturing plant in India, Mondelēz said. The first phase of the project is expected to be completed by 2015.
“This investment in India is part of our ongoing supply chain reinvention plan,” said Daniel Myers, executive vice-president of integrated supply chain. “We’re implementing a number of initiatives around the world to capitalize on the growing demand in emerging markets while also aggressively reducing costs and improving productivity. We’re pleased with our progress in the regions where we’ve already begun to invest.”
Last September, Mr. Myers highlighted numerous initiatives to redesign the company’s supply chain to deliver $1 billion in annual productivity savings over the next three years. The savings will be a primary driver of significant improvements in the company’s base operating income margin in the near term, he said.
Mondelēz has invested nearly $200 million to expand existing operational facilities in India during the past three years.
“We expect this model plant to set examples in production efficiency, energy savings, emission reductions and community involvement,” said Manu Anand, president, India and South Asia, Mondelēz International, and managing director, Cadbury India.
In addition to the manufacturing plant in Asia Pacific and the biscuit facility in the Czech Republic, Mondelēz earlier this year broke ground on an $85 million expansion at its cookie plant in Suzhou, China. The 98,000-square-foot expansion project will more than double the plant’s current capacity and create 340 new jobs.