Former Pepsi plant in Marion soon to produce First Fruits beverages

MARION, Va. – The old Pepsi Bottling Co. plant will soon have a new life as, well, a bottling plant.

It might not sound like an incredible transformation, but the 102,000-square-foot 1968 building will house a unique enterprise, say the owners of First Fruits Beverage Co., a lean, green, custom bottler of healthy drinks.

The bottom line for Smyth County is 75 new jobs, starting at about $10.50 an hour with benefits, along with the $1 million paid out in local labor and materials to renovate the building.

The bottom line for the men behind the project, they say, is a Christian company with a goal to make money the right way: provide a good product, take care of employees and give back a portion of the proceeds to the community.

So far, they say, they’ve received some 1,800 applications for the 25 jobs the plant will offer when it begins operating in January; total employment there is expected to grow incrementally to 75 within three years.

Health in a Bottle

Jack Tally, executive vice president and chief operating officer of First Fruits Beverage Co., said those involved are investing in the drinks of the future: “functional beverages.”

“I think everything you drink is going to provide a benefit to you in some way,” said Tally. “The baby boomers … they’re aging. They’re trying to get healthy, they’re trying to get longevity, and just the overwhelming movement that’s going on is spilling over into the beverage industry.”

He’s not promising the elixir of life – just organic teas and vitamin-enhanced water. Good-for-you beverages are seeing great gains in popularity, he said, as aging boomers seek to get energy, relaxation, beauty, and “anything you can think of” from beverages.

Among the customers that have bought into such efforts: the New York City school system, which is seeking healthy beverages to offer students in hopes of helping to fight childhood obesity.

“Probably our first run will be for the New York City school system,” said Roger Catarino, president and chief executive officer of the company, who said Jan. 13 is the target date for the plant to open.

Catarino said the company is also helping work toward better health in another realm – the environment. He said good stewardship of the environment – including plans to recycle waste and operate with an energy-efficient hybrid heating system – is part of their Christian philosophy.
But being green is also good for business. Green companies perform better financially, he said, and a lot of people will seek them out.

Recession-proof?

This is the second local beverage business venture for Tally and Catarino, who founded Grayson Mountain Water in Grayson County and ran it for a decade before selling the business.

Funding much of the project is Ernie Sullins, a local businessman who says he bought the empty factory from Pepsi about four years ago with the idea of turning it into “the world’s largest jeans store.”

Sullins, who’s run a discount clothing store in Smyth County since 1972 and has another in Abingdon, met Catarino and Talley about two years ago – and liked their drink-bottling idea.

“You can’t sit around and let the economy get better,” Sullins said. “You’ve got to make it get better.”

A state economic development grant, which has not been formally announced, will also help pay for the startup, according to First Fruits.
Catarino said the business, starting in the midst of a recession, is joining an industry that has prospered even in the toughest of times.

No industry has weathered the storms of the 20th century like the beverage industry, he said, in part because a rise in the price of its product is largely transparent and contract bottlers like First Fruits can make money on low-priced as well as high-priced drinks.

“When you get past Coke and Pepsi … almost every beverage out there is owned by some group but produced by a contract packer,” he said, and fewer than half a dozen such companies operate east of the Mississippi that have this plant’s capabilities.

He said the plant, centrally located to the interstate highway system that serves the East Coast, also has a unique innovation that will help it succeed here: the spin label. A spin label is a second, detachable label to the drink bottle that spins to allow additional information underneath to be viewed.

Plant Manager Lynn Veasey said the company is also pointing toward the future in another respect: it will be a lean operation from the get-go and avoid the kind of corporate bloating that can sometimes happen in good times.

“You run lean in good times, and in bad times you can make it through,” he said, a philosophy he says is essential to the future success of manufacturing in the United States.

Tally said First Fruits is also looking forward to bringing a Marion landmark back to life.

“It was just a huge blow to the community when Pepsi left, and to bring it back as another beverage facility was great,” he said. “It’s exciting to take a building and recycle it, and bring it back to life better than it ever was before, which it will be.”

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