Peats Ridge Coca-Cola plant downsized

Coca-Cola Amatil has scaled back its Peats Ridge bottling plant on the New South Wales Central Coast, five years after a long legal battle to increase the amount of groundwater its extracts from the region.

In 2008 the company won in its bid to boost the amount of water it takes from the local aquifer, despite ongoing community concerns about its impact on groundwater resources.

Five years after a long legal dispute to pump water from the local aquifer, Coca-Cola has scaled back its NSW Central Coast operations

Coca Cola Amatil has now confirmed it has closed its small bottling plant at Peats Ridge and offered redundancies to four employees.

In a statement, the company says demand for packaged water has dropped and its New South Wales operations have been consolidated in Sydney.

It says some water will still be extracted from Peats Ridge but there are no firm plans on how much.

The company maintains it has a number of water resources across the state and wants to balance the supply.

The local site will continue being maintained by some staff.

Source: ABC News, 11 July 2013