Coca-Cola Enterprises (CCE) has opened its newly refurbished Operations Centre (OC) in Milton Keynes, following a £5m investment.
Employing 160 people, the new operations centre located on Yeomans Drive is responsible for the purchase, distribution and refurbishment of all CCE’s cold drink equipment in shops and businesses throughout the UK.
Every cooler and piece of vending machine equipment that CCE distributes comes from the OC. It is also home to CCE’s Technical Call Centre (TCC), and operates as a support function for its Field Engineering and New Business teams.
The TCC team is available 364 days a year, handling over 10,000 calls per week, ranging from equipment service requests and customer queries to new business enquiries and machine movements.
The new site allows all of the functions to be housed in one purposely designed site, whereas previously the operations were previously split over two different locations.
The building itself incorporates a number of energy efficient features, including a heat recovery system and movement activated lighting, supporting CCE’s ambition to reduce the carbon footprint of the drink in the consumer’s hand by a third by 2020.
The site also sends zero waste to landfill meaning all waste is either recycled or recovered. Supporting CCE’s broader corporate and sustainability agenda on workplace diversity and promoting women in leadership, 80% of the management team at the new OC is made up of female colleagues.
Nick Collins, VP Technical Services at Coca-Cola Enterprises GB, said, “We are really delighted with our new look Operations Centre in Milton Keynes. We are proud to be a truly local business, and our on-going investment marks the start of an exciting new era for our cold drink operations with everyone together in one building.”
CCE has a long association with Milton Keynes, with the OC previously located in nearby Tongwell for 25 years. The new facility is also situated near to CCE’s separate manufacturing site, which opened in Northfield in 1976 and is responsible for producing a number of brands across its product portfolio.