Pepsico Plans $1.1-Billion Expansion

Pepsico Inc., the giant food and beverage conglomerate, plans to spend $1.1 billion in 1990 to expand its worldwide business, with the biggest chunk of cash going to its booming fast-food restaurant system.

In its annual report to stockholders, Pepsico said the expenditure “reflects strategies to expand international snack food capacity, increase soft drink vending presence worldwide and expand domestic pizza delivery operations.”

The company said 40% of its capital spending this year will be devoted to expanding the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell chains, with the rest split evenly between the Pepsi-Cola soft drink business and its Frito-Lay and Europe-based Smiths and Walkers snack foods.

Pepsico is the world’s biggest restaurant operator but is still best known among U.S. consumers for its cola drinks.

Chairman D. Wayne Calloway said his company’s focus for the new decade includes becoming “an even stronger player on a global scale.”

“Although we’ve nearly tripled our international operating profits in the past two years, they still represent only 16% of our total,” Calloway said.

On April 9, the Purchase, N.Y.-based company announced a complex barter deal with Moscow aimed at doubling its bottling network in the Soviet Union. The deal is valued at $3 billion over the next 10 years.

Pepsi-Cola Co. has also announced plans to begin sales in India, whose new government recently rejected an application from Cola-Cola to re-enter a market it left in the mid-1970s rather than reveal its top-secret cola formula.