Charlotte’s bottled up: Go inside Coke’s largest US bottling facility to see what’s new

The largest independent bottler of Coca-Cola products in the United States happens to be in Charlotte, and it doesn’t look anything like the 1950s-era bottling depiction on “Laverne & Shirley.”

The opening credits of that hit 1970s TV sitcom showed the two friends and bottle cappers standing along a beer bottling line at a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, beer company, “Doing it Our Way” and playing with some of the bottles on the conveyor line.

But on a sprawling, roughly 80-acre campus in northwest Charlotte near Interstate 85, Coca-Cola Consolidated is doing things its own way.

“We take care of the Coke business for about 20% of the United States,” said Dave Katz, president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola Consolidated. He was speaking during a tour of the company’s production and distribution facilities, part of the NC Chamber’s recent stop on its statewide NC Manufacturing Tour.

Coca-Cola Consolidated makes, sells and distributes non-alcoholic beverages of The Coca-Cola Co., based in Atlanta, and other partner companies with over 300 brands and flavors distributed in 14 states and Washington, D.C. The company has 11 manufacturing facilities, and Charlotte is the largest, Katz said.

Coca-Cola Consolidated reported net sales of $6.9 billion last year, according to the company’s annual report. The bottler has 17,000 employees companywide with over 2,000 in Charlotte.

The Charlotte Observer got to come along for a rare look at the company’s inner workings. We got to see the full process of how a Coca-Cola beverage goes from production to the store shelf.

“What’s made in North Carolina makes North Carolina,” NC Chamber’s CEO and President Gary Salamido said.

The tour in Charlotte started with a prayer by corporate chaplain Vince Riley, as Katz explained the company’s purpose is to “honor God in all we do, to serve others, to pursue excellence and to grow profitably.”

Inside the production center

The Snyder Production Facility is the oldest production site in the Coca-Cola Consolidated system, David Rubadeux, senior director of the production center said. Production moved from downtown Charlotte to this site 50 years ago, he said.

This facility has 351 employees on different shifts.

The 24/7 manufacturing site houses six production lines — four plastic bottle lines and two can lines — pumping out 40 million cases annually. Each line can change over multiple times a week to make different package sizes and flavors.

Among the products made in Charlotte are Diet Coke, Coke Classic, Sprite and Minute Maid lemonade. The Snyder facility was the first in the U.S. to bottle Dasani purified water, Rubadeux said.

We watched from a hallway through a window as unlabeled, empty 12-ounce plastic bottles swiftly moved along a production line to be filled and capped by an overhead conveyor. The black top revealed it was Coke Zero.

At Coca-Cola Consolidated, shiny, stainless steel machines in rooms do the bottling work as quality assurance technicians monitor every line. They perform periodic tests to make sure the closures are on just right.

But the machine also detects if a cap is not on correctly. A camera takes a picture of each container making sure each closure is on correctly. As one of the fill lines came to an abrupt halt, Rubadeux explained, “the system is detecting that they did not have a closure.”

The rejected 20-ounce bottles of Minute Maid Blue Raspberry plopped into the recycle bin with a splash as a maintenance operator worked to get the operation running again.

Filling is done just above freezing. The carbon dioxide causes the fizzing on the surface because it doesn’t like to be at room temperature.

“We have a refrigeration system that is helping us chill the product so that we get more time to put the closure on the bottle,” Rubadeux said. “The CO2 not only gives you the little bit of fizz that you enjoy, it also gives us a nice firm container for packaging and distribution.”

Across the hall from the filling rooms is a lab. Quality assurance workers use technology and their own taste buds to make sure each batch of beverage is correct. “If we’re running production, there are people working in this lab,” Rubadeux said.

Next, we moved to the canning lines that run twice as fast as the bottle-filling lines. About 20 individual cans get filled in one second, Rubadeux said.

After the open-topped cans were filled with the Full Throttle Blue Agave energy drink in one room, they were moved along to an adjoining room where the top is seamed onto the can, making it leak-proof.

Rubadeux also noted that the cans come from Winston Salem and the plastic bottles come from Southeastern Container in Kings Mountain.

Inside the distribution center

Connected to the production facility is the massive Vertique Distribution Center. Stacks and stacks of Coca-Cola Consolidated products sit on pallets nearly to the industrial warehouse ceiling. It’s loud in the automated warehouse with machine beeps and sounds.

This is just one of the multiple warehouses we have across this campus, said Jonathan Ryen, senior manager for the automated warehouse.

It houses 1.2 million cases on average. “This warehouse can be nearly cleared out in five to seven days if we didn’t produce anything more,” Ryen said.

About 23 million cases are distributed annually to customers within a two-hour radius of Charlotte, Ryen said. The warehouse has 180 employees with up to 40 employees working on each shift.

With the assistance of Vertique automated machines, employees can package the products to be shipped to customers throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.

The warehouse contains a rainbow of inventory waiting to be separated and packaged for distribution.

Atop a third-level walkway with a bird’s eye view of the operation, automated operators and material handlers separated the finished packaged products for distribution. On a TV screen the system automatically shows employees which product to pick to go into the right sequence.

Then a hand stacker evens out the stacked pallet before it’s sent through a giant stretch wrapper. “The (automation) eliminates the ergonomic risk associated with building pallets from the ground up,” Ryen said.

The semi-automatic picking started in fall 2022, Ryen said, to meet growing customer demand.

Inside the Charlotte Learning Center

A bus ride to a separate building stops at the bottling company’s learning center.

The center is for on-boarding classes and hands-on learning that includes staging areas for small and large stores, and food service on-premise for example at stadiums, schools and hospitals.

The $1.8 million learning center was designed on a cocktail napkin and opened in 2018, said Justice Fullenwider, learning and development manager at Coca-Cola Consolidated. It matches what employees will see in the field, she said.

Rolling up the back door of a truck back, Fullenwider explained how employees are tested on organizing products on palettes to see how their jobs make a difference unloading products to customers.

The on-premise college student fridge might include breakfast beverages and energy drinks, while the high school cooler has no coffee or energy drinks and lower sugar, Fullenwider explained.

“We have to think about the different types of consumers that come into our different types of accounts when we’re in food service on-premise,” she said.

About Coca-Cola Consolidated

The 123-year-old company is a fourth-generation business.

CEO and board chairman J. Frank Harrison III is the great-grandson of co-founder J.B. Harrison. Harrison, who was selling Coca-Cola in Greensboro, and Luther Snyder, who was selling Coca-Cola in Charlotte. They merged their businesses in 1973 to form Coca-Cola Bottling Co.

Coca-Cola Consolidated purchases concentrates from The Coca‑Cola Co., based in Atlanta, and other beverage companies, such as Dr. Pepper.

Along with the 535,000-square foot manufacturing plant and adjacent 115,000-square foot distribution center in west Charlotte, the company’s 172,000-square-foot corporate offices are in SouthPark.

In 2015, Coca-Cola Consolidated opened a 71,280-square-foot customer care facility in northeast Charlotte.

In North Carolina, the company has more than 4,500 employees in 13 facilities serving over 28,000 businesses, Katz said. The publicly-traded company has 60 sales and distribution centers in 14 states and 17,000 employees, with the majority working full-time, delivering to 60 million customers.

The company’s largest customers are Walmart and Kroger, according to its annual 10-K filing last month. Coca-Cola Consolidated reported net sales increased $245.9 million, or 3.7%, to $6.9 billion in 2024, compared to 2023.

On the tour, Coca-Cola Consolidated officials also talked about the company’s work in the Charlotte community, including internships with local high schools, colleges and trade schools. And for employees like Tim Duhart, Coca-Cola has given him a second career after 20 years as a truck driver.

A couple of years ago, the 47-year-old saw an ad for a Coca-Cola Consolidated apprenticeship. He went through the program and was hired as a diesel technician. He is the first graduate of Coke Consolidated and Central Piedmont Community College’s Apprenticeship program.

“It’s been everything I’ve been wanting to do for years,” he said.

This story was originally published March 27, 2025 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Charlotte’s bottled up: Go inside Coke’s largest US bottling facility to see what’s new."