Crown Holdings, a metal packaging company, said this week it would build a second factory in Cambodia to keep up with the Kingdom’s growing beer industry.

The Sihanoukville factory, which is expected to produce 725 million aluminium cans a year, will be begin operating in the third quarter of 2013, according to a statement from the company.

Crown spokesman Michael Dunleavy did not respond to questions about the company’s initial investment in the factory.

In the statement, Crown’s Asia-Pacific president noted the Kingdom’s growing industry.

“Cambodia is growing at a steady pace,” Jozef Salaerts said. “This, in turn, is driving increased demand for our customers’ products, and we are experiencing a preference on their part for two-piece aluminum beverage cans.”

The general manager of Phnom Penh Beers, which produces the Special and Phnom Penh Beer brands, confirmed that his company also bought cans from Crown and said the expansion was necessary.

“The beer industry in our country is very big, so their investment expansion is right,” the brewery’s Taing Sry Uy said yesterday.

The Cambodian food and beverage industry was worth US$1 billion in 2011, Mines, Industry and Energy Minister Suy Sem said this week at the official opening of the Khmer Brewery.

About 40 per cent of that value was in the beer industry, Suy Sem said.

Crown opened its first plant in Cambodia in 2008.

Crown Holdings has plants in Cambodia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as well three plants in Vietnam, according to the company’s statement.

To contact the reporter on this story: May Kunmakara at [email protected]