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Food giant Kraft Heinz has confirmed it plans to invest $3bn into modernising its 30 manufacturing sites across the US.
The company made the announcement in an interview with Reuters this week, reported to be its largest investment in its manufacturing facilities in a decade.
Confirming the news on LinkedIn, Kraft Heinz’ SVP and head of North America operations, Helen Davis, wrote: “This investment sets the bar for operations excellence in the CPG sector, accelerating our ambition to build the supply chain of the future and I couldn’t be prouder”.
According to Reuters, the upgrades will improve efficiency at the plants, helping to lower costs. Kraft Heinz’ president of North America was reported to have told Reuters that President Donald Trump’s tariffs factored into the investment decision, with the company hoping to offset some of the impact of the Trump administration’s tariff plan.
The investment is expected to create around 3,500 new construction jobs. It follows a previously announced (July 2023) investment of $400 million into building a 775,000-square-foot automated distribution centre in DeKalb, Illinois, to enable greater supply chain efficiency. Reuters said the newly announced $3 billion figure includes this previous investment.
Last year, the company received a $170 million investment from the US Department of Energy to support the implementation of clean energy projects at ten of its US plants. This included installing a range of technologies such as heat pumps, electric heaters and boilers, anaerobic digestion, thermal energy storage and more, creating an estimated 500 jobs across the sites.