The visit was hosted by John Keeling, Brewing Director and Duncan Munro, Operations Director.

The visit commenced with a presentation given by John Keeling on the site history. John explained that there has been a brewing tradition on site for 350 years, with the Fuller name being introduced in 1829, the Smith name in 1840, and the Turner name in 1845 when a Mr Turner became the first Head Brewer. It still remains very much a family business and is a successful Regional brewer.

John then continued to explain the Fullers business philosophy of “aiming to be the benchmark in retailing and brewing, delivering Quality, Service and Pride in everything we do”. Their objectives are to operate modern style brewing techniques in order to produce better flavour and quality beers, as well as offering different and unique flavours.

The company’s long term view is to invest in production facilities as well as brand development, and, as a result of this policy total production has increased from 70,000 barrels to 210,000 barrels per annum over the past 14 years, and another new brand recently introduced, Discovery Blonde Beer.

The Fuller's Brewery tour gave us a fascinating insight into how their beers are brewed. You could see how Fullers have combined traditional brewing methods and modern technology. They have a unique brewing process and use only English hops which are added at the copper/whirlpool stage. Finally, 75% of total production is fed for cask filling and 25% is condition filtered and pasteurised before being filled into bottles, cans or kegs.

The bottling facility is designed for filling non returnable bottles, size of 330cl and 500cl. Bottles are fed via a rinser to a Simonazzi filler running at 330 bottles/min and then to a Krones labeller. An Ocme packer is then used to produce shrink wrapped packs of 12s and 8’s. Empty bottle depalletising and palletising of finished product are carried out on back-to-back Lita machines.

Our visit to the Kegging plant gave the opportunity to view the new installation rated at 280 Kegs per hr. for 50 litre kegs which is due to replace the existing line running at 120 kegs per hr. and is a demonstration of Fullers capital investment policy, the installation costing a cool £2.1 million. The new line includes the latest racking technology ensuring that kegs are filled accurately by the use of a specialised flow control valve which increases speed and is gentle to the product. The line also includes an intelligent robot controlled palletiser as well as a dual lane keg washer, designed to be space efficient.

The finished product loading bay was a very busy operation. The Estate and Customer base requires Fullers to make between 800 and 1,000 deliveries per week 85% of volume being by trunker and 15% to an estate of 240 pubs and 8 hotels.

On our tour of the site, which operates on a 5 day double shift operation, we found a very safe and friendly environment with people being proud of working on a site which is important to English Heritage.

To round off the visit John Keeling conducted a tutored tasting session, enabling members to have a tasting of some of the range of Fuller's beers in the Griffin Brewery's famous Hock Cellar, where they also proudly display their Gold and Silver medals and certificates from the BBI 2004 Beer and Alcoholic drinks competition along with many other awards.

On conclusion of the visit John Yates thanked our hosts for a splendid visit and buffet lunch and also thanked Georgina Young, Brewing Manager and Doug Hunter, Packaging Operations Manager, for taking time out to guide us through a unique and successful brewing operation.

Brian Gibbs,

Southern Section Coordinator.

The British Bottlers’ Institute.