PepsiCo to double investment at Kazakhstan salty snacks plant

The fresh investment in the project, the US group’s largest project in central Asia, was announced by the Kazakh Foreign Ministry on 20 May. An investment agreement is to be signed between the Kazakh government and PepsiCo, Just Food reported.

The company has decided to launch its second phase of the project, doubling its original $160m investment in the plant in the Almaty region, near the Kyrgyzstan border, which could increase production more than three times and create 900 jobs.

The facility originally set out to produce 16,000 tonnes of snack products a year, when it opens in spring 2026, but will now aim to produce 70,000 tonnes of finished product from up to 210,000 tonnes of potatoes.

The announcement follows a meeting between Kazakhstan’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alibek Kuantyrov and David Manzini, the president of PepsiCo’s operations across Russia, Belarus, the Caucasus and central Asia.

PepsiCo plans to source exclusively local potatoes for the plant by 2035 and Manzini confirmed potato supply contracts had been signed with 15 Kazakhstani farmers, the Ministry said.

“We consider PepsiCo projects as an important step towards the development of the processing industry in our country. Increasing processing, developing contract farming, producing export products with high added value: All this is considered by Kazakhstanis as an important step towards the development of the processing industry in our country,” Kuantyrov added.

Manzini noted the support of local authorities in the project. “The implementation of such a large-scale project from scratch in a short period of time was possible only thanks to the support of the authorities at the central and local levels. Kazakhstan is creating favourable conditions for foreign investors, which gave us the basis to make a decision to significantly increase investment and expand the project,” the PepsiCo executive said.

Kazakhstan Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov said after a separate meeting with Manzini that the country aims to become “one of the key agricultural centres for Eurasia,” and plans to shift the economy from commodity production to industrial agriculture.

PepsiCo expects its business outside of North America to be a key driver of its revenue growth this year, and for the longer term, after overseas business propped up its sales outlook, chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said last month when discussing first-quarter results.