Farsons is investing €27 million on a new beer and soft drinks packaging plant as it bids to treble its exports, Prime Minister Joseph Muscat was told during a tour of the company in Mriehel this morning.

Company chairman Louis Farrugia said work on the project will start in April and will be completed within two years.

Farsons last year had one of its best years for exports, sending  371  20- foot containers of beer and soft drinks to supermarkets in Europe, the US, Africa and Asia.  

With the new facility, Farsons is aiming to treble exports within five years from six per cent of total production to 17 per cent of production, Mr Farrugia said.

He said that over the past eight years, Farsons had invested €80 million on improving its products and production.

Dr Muscat welcomed the new investment and praised the company for thinking outside the box in order to remain competitive. He said the governemnt was committed to ensure that Maltese companies were competitive. Two ways it was doing so was by cutting bureaucracy and by reducing power tariffs for industry by a quarter next year.