By Annie Gasparro Starbucks Corp. (SBUX) is bulking up the production capabilities of its Evolution Fresh Inc. premium juice company by building a new facility that will be able to make four to five times as much juice. The Seattle coffee giant, which acquired Evolution Fresh in November for $30 million in cash, has been trying to expand beyond its core cafe business in the U.S. with aims of becoming a global consumer powerhouse. It recently acquired a bakery and launched a line of energy drinks, and is also preparing to unveil an espresso brewer this fall. Moving the production of Evolution juice from the 72,000-square-foot facility in San Bernardino, Calif., to a 260,000-square-foot building in Rancho Cucamonga will help put the bottled juices on more supermarket shelves. The new facility, which will cost Starbucks about $70 million, is expected to be operational in late 2013, but it may take longer to reach full capacity. "This is a long-term investment that will help us meet the need for fresh-pressed juice on the West coast and allow us to begin expanding Eastward," said Jeff Hansberry, Starbucks's president of channel development. Starbucks says its consumer products business, which recently reached $1 billion in sales, will one day rival its coffee shops in terms of sales. "Our pipeline for bringing new products to the market is consistent, so it allows us to introduce a number of them," Mr. Hansberry said. "It's like building a highway, once the highway is built, you can put more and more cars on it." Evolution Fresh, started by the founder of Naked Juice, is a line of fresh fruit and vegetable juices made using a process called high-pressure pasteurization, in which the juice isn't heated, thus helping it retain the nutrients and flavors. Starbucks is aiming to do with juice what it has done with coffee, by turning a product into an experience. Not only does it sell the juice in some Starbucks cafes and natural food stores, such as Whole Foods Market (WFM), but it has also opened two stand-alone Evolution Fresh retail stores on the West coast and two more are in the works. "We're still in the very early days for Evolution Fresh retail stores, so for now, our focus is on expanding Evolution Fresh to more natural foods stores and premium grocery stores while we continue to learn about the business" of the stand-alone locations, Mr. Hansberry said. Evolution Fresh was the first packaged product Starbucks has acquired since 2005, when it bought Ethos Water, a brand of bottled water carried only in Starbucks stores, for an undisclosed sum. The new facility won't constitute much of Starbucks's capital expenditure budget, which it expects to total $900 million this fiscal year and $1 billion in fiscal 2013. The plant will be Starbucks's sixth manufacturing site in the U.S. Last month, Starbucks began building its first company-owned factory to make soluble products, like its VIA Ready Brew, in the U.S. Starbucks said the move will lower distribution costs by making the products domestically rather than in Colombia and Switzerland. The 120 employees at the current Evolution Fresh juicery have been offered positions at the new one, and Starbucks expects to add 40 more manufacturing jobs. Write to Annie Gasparro at annie.gasparro@dowjones.com Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires
