Soft-drink global behemoth, Coca Cola, is set to have an even-greater presence in China, as a new agreement has been signed that shall see a couple of billion renminbi poured into R&D and a new bottling plant in our very own Jiangsu Province.
Last Thursday, 12 January, saw Swire Coca-Cola sign off on the project comprising a total investment of ¥2 billion, in the process becoming the division’s largest-single investment in China to date.
1 月 12 日上周四，太古可口可乐签署了总投资 20 亿元人民币的项目，成为该部门迄今为止在中国最大的单笔投资。
The cash is destined for Kunshan in Suzhou City of Jiangsu, where the new Swire facility will have an annual output of more than 1.6 million tons. Hong Kong-based Swire is the fifth-largest bottling partner for Coca Cola worldwide.
这笔现金将运往江苏省苏州市昆山市，太古新工厂的年产量将超过160万吨。总部位于香港的太古集团是可口可乐全球第五大装瓶合作伙伴。
Such a capacity will be achieved through what is being touted as the most-advanced and highly-automated production line in the food and beverage (F&B) industry, and by realising intelligent human-machine collaboration using cloud services and big data.
这一能力将通过被誉为食品饮料行业最先进、高度自动化的生产线，并利用云服务和大数据实现智能人机协作来实现。
As a Swire Coca-Cola innovation centre, the investment into Kunshan will also help to bring more new products to market and to introduce new packaging in the future.
作为太古可口可乐的创新中心，对昆山的投资也将有助于未来将更多新产品推向市场并引入新包装。
But why put it in Kunshan, previously the world’s largest producer of laptop computers?
但为什么要把它放在曾经是全球最大笔记本电脑生产地的昆山呢？
That’s in part down to the increasing global concern for environmental issues; such large-scale manufacturing has fallen out of favour of late. In its place, Kunshan today has a plan to establish a new reputation as a high-end, food-industry hub, featuring innovation-driven growth, as reports Jiangsu Now.
这在一定程度上是由于全球对环境问题的日益关注。如此大规模的制造最近已失宠。据《今日江苏》报道，昆山目前计划将其打造成高端食品工业中心，以创新驱动增长为特色。
An additional factor driving the Swire decision is also said to be the guarantee of energy consumption at the site, as well as in software support, particularly as regard talent and business-environment policy.
据称，推动太古做出这一决定的另一个因素还包括现场能源消耗的保证以及软件支持，特别是在人才和营商环境政策方面。
Elsewhere in the new Kunshan hub, Starbucks began construction of its China Coffee Innovation Park back in 2020, while Luckin Coffee last year broke ground on a fully-automated, coffee-bean-roasting production plant.
在昆山新中心的其他地方，星巴克早在 2020 年就开始建设中国咖啡创新园，而瑞幸咖啡则于去年破土动工建设一座全自动咖啡豆烘焙生产工厂。
Among the other major F&B players to have also recently settled in Kunshan are notably Daifei Chocolate and Yizheng Food Roastery from China, Japan’s Nissei, and the Vietnamese coffee brand, Trung Nguyen.
最近落户昆山的其他主要餐饮企业包括中国的戴飞巧克力和一正烘焙食品、日本的日精以及越南咖啡品牌中原。
