Business 5 min read By Alice Ashford
Coca-Cola to invest $10bn in US growth through 2030
Coca-Cola has outlined a $10bn system-wide infrastructure investment across the United States from 2026 to 2030, as an independent study finds the beverage giant contributed $85bn to US GDP and supported nearly one million jobs last year.
Coca-Cola will invest $10bn in infrastructure across the United States between 2026 and 2030, the company's president and chief financial officer John Murphy has said, describing the programme as a growth play rather than a defensive response to trade tariffs.
The investment is a system-wide figure rather than Coca-Cola's own capital expenditure alone. Under the company's asset-light model, Coca-Cola funds brand development while its bottling partners pay for the plants, trucks and equipment used to make and deliver drinks. Murphy said the lion's share of the $10bn represents the plans of those bottling partners to keep investing at local level in manufacturing, distribution and sales.
The programme covers multiple projects, including new or expanded facilities in Rancho Cucamonga, California; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Indianapolis, Indiana; Birmingham, Alabama; Coopersville, Michigan; St Cloud, Minnesota; Orlando, Florida; and Webster, New York. Murphy said capacity expansions typically add jobs, pointing to hundreds of new roles at Webster, while equipment upgrades may not.
Murphy rejected the suggestion that the spending is a hedge against tariffs, noting that the Coca-Cola system already retains 98 cents of every dollar spent on its beverages inside the US economy, leaving little room for further reshoring. He pointed instead to the availability of capital and disposable income across the country. «If you think about the availability of capital, the disposable income that's at large across the US, it's a market with boundless growth potential ahead,» he said.
The investment plan was set out as Coca-Cola published an independent study, commissioned by the company, which found it contributed $85bn to US GDP in 2025 — equivalent to roughly $10m every hour. The same research put its support for American jobs at nearly one million and its spending with US suppliers at about $37bn last year.
Murphy, a nearly 40-year veteran of the Coca-Cola system, was in Washington DC on Monday meeting constituents from around the country. He said those conversations test the value of the report because he hears first-hand about local impact. Reflecting on the company's scale, he noted that Coca-Cola «was once a business that was a local business in the state of Georgia», and that its presence today in every state, county and town is something the study brings to life in granular detail.
The $85bn figure, he added, reflects the industry's weight in the US economy. «It gives one a sense of pride at the role that we play, but also a sense of responsibility,» he said.
The study builds on a more limited version published in 2023, when fewer bottling partners took part — one reason the GDP contribution rose from $58.8bn then to $85bn now. Murphy attributed the remainder to business momentum, including growth at Fairlife and Bodyarmor, two brands that have expanded Coca-Cola's presence in categories where it historically had little. «We're seeing growth in categories that historically we have not had a significant presence in,» he said. «They are also reasons for the number to be that much bigger.»
Asked how he balances short-term discipline with long-term investment, Murphy described it as a discipline built up over time. He measures the short term by whether commitments are delivered daily, while «the long term is the sum of many short terms». He framed the approach as stewardship. «We're here as stewards of a great business, and someday we'll pass that baton to somebody else,» he said.
Coca-Cola owns a small number of capital-intensive operations, including Fairlife, whose spending counts towards its own capital expenditure. The bulk of the $10bn, however, will be deployed by bottling partners at local level, reinforcing a model that keeps manufacturing and distribution close to the customers it serves.
