Amcor Rigid Plastics is opening an on-site bottle-making operation in Texas, a move that will allow it to cut freight costs and improve operational efficiencies.
The new facility at a Campbell Soup Co. site in Paris, Texas, is capable of producing about 50 million hot-fill PET bottles each year for the company's V8 brand of drinks.
Amcor Rigid Plastics, based in Ann Arbor, Mich., spent $7 million to create the bottle-making operation in 6,000 square feet of existing space to produce both 46- and 64-ounce containers for various V8 products, the packaging company said.
"We're excited about establishing this on-site operation because it expands our long-time strategic partnership with Campbell and gives us an opportunity to better serve a key strategic customer," said Larry Weber, vice president and general manager of Amcor's North American beverage business unit, in a statement.
Amcor Rigid Plastics has been blow molding bottles at Campbell's beverage plant in Napoleon, Ohio, since 2004. The company makes 150 million hot-fill PET containers there each year.
Moving bottle production on-site at Campbell in Texas means 2,000 truckloads of empty containers will be taken off the road each year. Amcor Rigid Plastics previously supplied bottles from its Fort Worth, Texas, site, the company said.
The plastics company estimates that the move is equivalent of removing about 900,000 passenger vehicle miles of carbon dioxide emissions from the road each year.
Amcor Rigid Plastics is a unit of Australia-based Amcor Ltd.