Recently, the US multinational food and beverage company PepsiCo broke ground on its first food production base in the Jingkai District of Xi'an.

The project, with a total investment of about 1.3 billion yuan, is the 10th food factory invested by PepsiCo in China and the 1st food factory in Northwest China built per the international "net-zero emissions" standard. The project is being constructed in phases, with an investment of approximately 575 million yuan for the current phase, which covers an area of about 100 mu (16.5 acres). Two potato chip production lines with an annual capacity of 25,000 tons and related supporting facilities are under construction now and expected to begin trial operations by the end of 2025.

Why did PepsiCo choose Xi'an in Shaanxi? Li Youlin, Senior Vice President of Supply Chain of PepsiCo Asia Pacific and Greater China, said that Xi'an, an important transportation hub in Western China, is a fertile investment ground with excellent development opportunities.

"The first phase of the investment in PepsiCo's Shaanxi production base reaches $80 million (about 575 million yuan), and the corresponding building area is about 32,000 square meters. As the project is finished, it will pull the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to develop synergistically, largely support the potato planting with technologies and methodologies, and unite enterprises in warehousing, logistics and distribution, raw materials and packaging materials to gather to the base, jointly achieving high-quality development." Li Youlin said.

As the world's leading food and beverage company, PepsiCo's global net income exceeds $91 billion in 2023. Over the past decade, PepsiCo has invested more than 53 billion yuan in China, establishing one Asian research and development center, nine food production bases, and more than 70 farms.

PepsiCo's food production base project in Shaanxi is the first Fortune 500 foreign manufacturing enterprise project in Xi'an to enter the healthy food and beverage industrial park, which will inject great power into Xi'an's construction of a world-class industrial innovation and development zone.