Suntory Oceania has officially opened its new $400 million Swanbank factory in Ipswich, Queensland.

The facility will take end-to-end responsibility for a portfolio of 40 brands across premium spirits, RTD (ready-to-drink) alcohol beverages, juice, water, soft drinks, coffee, energy and sports drinks, including premium Japanese whiskies, Suntory -196 RTD, Jim Beam, Maker’s Mark and Canadian Club.

The milestone was attended by Federal Assistant Minister for Regional Development, Anthony Chisholm and Queensland Minister for Finance and Trade, Ros Bates MP and Ambassador of Japan for Australia Kazuhiro Suzuki.

Suntory Oceania also welcomed guests from all levels of government and leaders from across the Suntory Holdings Limited global network including Tak Niinami, Makiko Ono and Greg Hughes.

Delivered on time and in just two years, the multi-beverage site is the single largest FMCG investment into Australia in the last decade.

Suntory Oceania said the facility had brought significant economic benefits to the South East Queensland region, with more than 450 construction workers delivering the facility in record time, the creation of 160 permanent roles and long-term community and supplier relationships embedded for the future.

Suntory Beverage & Food Oceania CEO Dai Minato said: “At Suntory, our culture is shaped by our unique ‘Yatte Minahare’ spirit, which has encouraged us to dream big and make those dreams a reality for over a century. I’m excited by the ambition of our people, the strength of our brands, and the opportunity to shape new beverage experiences. This is just the beginning!”

Purpose-built with sustainability at its heart, our 17-hectare carbon neutral site has been enabled by 14 kilometres of rooftop solar panels, a power-purchase agreement, a biomass boiler and further energy-efficient technologies.

The new plant includes a high-speed glass line and two canning lines supplied by Krones, and a kegging system from KHS.

From three depallitisers, the system can send 90,000 cans to the fillers in an hour and has the capacity to double that.

The glass line can accommodate five different bottle sizes and from depalletiser to being wrapped and sent to the ASRS takes around 25 minutes. A carton is packed every two seconds. Flexibility and automated changeover also had to be engineered into the lines that will ultimately fill and pack 60 different stock keeping units (SKUs).

The factory is carbon neutral and spans 17 hectares – around 17 rugby fields. It has:

• 7000 solar panels (14 kilometres end-to-end) that power the production of more than 20 million cases of beverages a year (ultimately growing to 50,000);
• A purchase power agreement with Queensland-based CleanCo;
• a biomass boiler that will use offcuts from the local sawmill as fuel to generate heat for the sites manufacturing heating requirements; and
• an organic Rankine cycle generator – a unique technology to capture waste heat and turn it into green energy to put back into the grid.