bareilly cocacola india is chalking out plans to increase its presence in uttar pradesh the late entrant seeks to snatch marketshare from the dominant rival in the state pepsi foods by increasing presence in the pet bottle segment the expansion in the pet segment is to be carried out by cocacolas franchisee bottler brindavan beverages ltd bbl which has four bottling plants in up bbl has just set up a pet bottling production line at its bareilly plant with an investment of rs 65 crore with this the total investment in the bareilly plant has touched rs 65 crore the production line has an installed capacity of 3600 pet bottles per hour within one or two years we will set up one more such pet line at another ladhani plant in up sn ladhani md of bbl told a group of visiting journalists here apart from four franchisee bottling plants of bbl cocacola has four plants of its own it has a pet bottle production facility at the companyowned plant at dasna however ladhani said it was important to increase the presence in the pet segment which will eventually in future become a much larger segment than the glass one in the state at bareilly pet accounts for 2530 per cent of the total bottle segment instead of sourcing from dasna its viable to have a production facility here to cater to growing demand from hilly areas of nainital kedarnath and badrinath in the state pet bottle is poised to touch a share of 20 per cent soon up from around 12 per cent at present he said coke india head alex von behr said bbl was one of the fastest growing bottlers of the cola major like goenkas and kandharis they have fast promoted the coke brand in up he added however ladhani admitted that as a coke bottler he is pushing hard to catch up with pepsi which enjoys the advantage of first entrant in the state in 1998 pepsi had a twothird market share now we are close to them he said the new pet line will be used for both carbonated soft drink coke and thums up and water kinley a proper quality control and cleaning system has been put in place to bottle two soft drink flavours and water in the same line in up thums up is a more popular brand among above35yearold segment while coke is preferred by the younger generation he added rival pepsi has 5 plants in up three of them are companyowned four out of them have pet bottling facilities ladhani also indicated that he would like to pick up shares of cocacola india who is expected to launch a public issue by julyaugust this year