| Travelling from all parts of the UK, members of the BBI were recently rewarded with a thoroughly interesting visit to the factory operation of Cott Beverages at their Main European plant, sited at Kegworth near Derby.
Nick Whitley, General Manager hosted the visit and opened the proceedings by giving us a very informative presentation, firstly explaining the structure of Cott Beverages.
The Company is the 4th largest Soft Drinks Company in the World with 21 Plants employing 3,200 people and was originally formed as Pencer in Montreal, Canada.
Cott Beverages operate in 65 different countries manufacturing in Canada, USA, UK and Mexico and have franchise operations in 61 other countries.
They entered the UK in 1994 by purchasing BenShaw at Pontefract and in the same year launched Classic Cola. In 1996 the Hero Drinks factory at Kegworth was purchased (previously Carters Soft Drinks) and this year they bought out the MaCaw business at Nelson.
Nick also explained the thinking and culture that gives their business its success. They have created a vision which is based upon:
Customer Centred Focus
Supply System Excellence
Including People through,
Information Technology
Driving Profitable Growth.
The success of this vision is measured in terms of people retention, low unit cost, operating with a flat structure as well as satisfying their customers and growing the business.
The Kegworth plant is a dedicated plastic bottle filling operation producing 38 to 40 million cases p.a. supplying 47 Customers, including Major Multiples, Convenience Stores, Wholesale Stores, and the On Trade, with own label and company owned brands. It is a 36 acre site, purpose built for Soft Drinks with 7 production lines, 6 for carbonate products and 1 for still products. It is conveniently sited in a central part of the UK giving it a distribution advantage.
Members of the Kegworth Production team conducted a tour of the bottling lines. The lines fill 6 sizes of pet bottles ranging from 250ml to 2litre on high-speed lines filling up to a rate of 36,000 bottles per hour. Bottles are packed loose in 24s (small sizes) or multipacked in 6s 8s or 12sfor larger sizes.
The lines were seen to be traditional in their concept consisting of bottle blowers linked to rinsers/fillers, labellers, carton erectors/packers and finally palletisers with the lines being arranged in order to achieve efficient manning levels. This is a very flexible plant with the ability to undertake flavour and bottle size changes, up to 8 per day and has part of the operation dedicated to packing Merchandising Units for the Major Multiples.
After palletising and stretch wrapping finished product is fed into a 16,000 pallet automated warehouse with pallets being handled by A.G.Vs. The site operates 24 hours per day 5 to 7 days per week according to seasonal requirements, and employs 120 people
After the tour an excellent buffet lunch was provided and a lively questions and answers session was held, finally, the proceedings were rounded off by the B.B.I. Secretary John Yates who congratulated our hosts on their ambitious and successful development of both the business and the Kegworth site. John also thanked Nick and the Cott team for their hospitality and for making this a very interesting and successful event.
Brian Gibbs
Southern Section Coordinator
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