Princes has completed the first phase of a £17 million investment project, as the company has installed a new squash bottling line at its manufacturing site in Bradford, UK.

Princes – which owns drink brands including Aqua Pura mineral water and squash brand Jucee – says the new line is capable of handling varying bottle sizes from 750ml to 1.5l, and has the capacity to produce up to 36,000 bottles per hour. Six different bottle formats will be commissioned by the end of December.

The Bradford facility is Princes’s largest UK soft drinks production site, producing still and carbonated soft drinks across a variety of flavours and pack formats for the Jucee, Geebee and Wells brands, as well as customer own brand squash products such as cordials, high juice and squash drinks.

According to a statement released by Princes, the new line will also allow the business to further reduce the weight of its bottles, removing approximately 300 tonnes of plastic from Princes’s supply chain every year.

This build upon sustainability commitments already made by the company, which recently announced that it is now using 51% recycled PET in all of its soft drinks and oils packaging, and 30% high-density polyethylene (HDPE) in chilled juice drink packaging.

The opening of the new line was marked by a small ceremony attended by Princes Group chairman Manabu Oda and managing director Cameron Mackintosh.

Andy Hargraves, group director for Soft Drinks at Princes said: “Our new line at Bradford is delivering increased production, state of the art equipment and better energy efficiency to the site, and is a major part of our commitment to UK manufacturing and providing long-term, high-quality employment opportunities in the area.

“This investment is also a further example of the strong position we have on the recycled content in our drinks business, as part of our shared responsibility to reduce, reuse and recycle all types of plastic.”