A man works at a production line of the Swire Coca-Cola Beverages Hubei Limited in Wuhan, central China's Hubei Province, March 24, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

The construction of a new plant of Swire Coca-Cola Ltd., a bottler of Coca-Cola, with investment of 2 billion yuan (about 279 million U.S. dollars) started Wednesday in Suzhou, east China's Jiangsu Province.

A ceremony was held in Suzhou's Kunshan to lay the foundation stone at the plant. Covering an area of 116,000 square meters, the new plant will be developed into a modern factory integrating production, distribution, and regional sales headquarters in east China.

The plant is scheduled to be completed and put into operation at the end of 2025, with 13 production lines planned.

According to Dang Jian, CEO of Swire Coca-Cola Chinese Mainland, the new factory will incorporate cloud services and big data technology and integrate the concept of green and low-carbon production to lead the industry's digitization and green transformation.

Equipped with advanced production lines in the food and beverage industry, the new plant will adopt a highly automated manufacturing information system and quality management system for comprehensive information flow management, meanwhile applying cloud services and big data to realize human-machine collaboration.

The new factory will also use green building materials and recyclable materials.

Swire Coca-Cola will invest more than 12 billion yuan on the Chinese mainland in the next decade, said Karen So, managing director of Swire Coca-Cola.

"We are optimistic about the unlimited potential of the Chinese market. We look forward to sharing new opportunities and momentum of high-level opening up in China and expect to grow alongside the Chinese market," the director added.

As one of the largest Coca-Cola bottling groups in the world, Swire Coca-Cola operates 25 plants on the Chinese mainland.