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PepsiCo has announced a £24 million investment in its Walkers factory in Lincoln, UK, to meet growing demand for its Quavers snacks.

The investment will see the company replace existing machinery at the site with new equipment, such as a compact packaging machine that will help PepsiCo to remove packaging from its supply chain.

The project will also increase the factory’s capacity for Quavers – which PepsiCo claims are now bought by nearly one in three households in the UK – as well as make space for new production lines.

The new equipment will be installed at Lincoln in the middle of next year, with initial work now underway.

Meanwhile, more than £1 million has been committed to Walkers’ Coventry factory – which produces snacks such as Doritos, Wotsits, French Fries and Cheetos – for additional equipment to maintain production during the work at Lincoln.

“For decades, our Lincoln factory has brought much-loved Quavers snacks to consumers up and down the country, and with this state-of-the-art technology, we’re confident that the site will continue to serve the nation for many years to come,” said Nigel Beilby, Lincoln site operations manager, PepsiCo.

UK Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng added: “This investment will help to deliver on our plan to spread opportunity across the Midlands by future-proofing the jobs of the factory’s outstanding employees by training them to use state-of-the-art equipment, and further bolstering the workforce through their apprenticeship scheme”.

In the US, PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division recently announced a $200 million investment to further expand its Rosenberg site in Texas, which produces more than 117 million pounds of snacks per year.