Members of the BBI visited the original home of Britvic Soft Drinks at Widford Chelmsford. The visit was well attended and gave a much appreciated opportunity for members of the BBI, who were rewarded with an interesting presentation and tour of the production lines.

The visit was hosted by Matt Thewlis, Factory Manager and proceedings opened with a presentation on the origins of the Britvic Brand name and the history of the Widford site. The company originated when in 1938 Ralph Chapman began experimenting with fruit juices containing vitamin C from a chemists shop in Chelmsford.

The Britvic brand was launched in 1949 and the Company grew to 20 people working from a chemists shop when in 1954 the “British Vitamin Company” was sold to Vine Products Limited. The Widford factory was launched in two phases in 1954 and 1955 as one of the most modern soft drinks factory in Europe with levels of automation not previously seen before in the industry. Production was exclusively of fruit juices with a factory capability of 1,300 ‘dozens’ per hour, employing over 600 people.

Widford Factory in its early days

By 1972 the Site operated 3 returnable production lines when at that time Britvic mixers were introduced.

Widford was the sole manufacturing site for all Britvic fruit juice’s in returnable glass packaging until 1986 when the merger with Canada Dry Rawlings took place and during the 90s the sites principle role was that of New Product Development.

With the success of J2O, originally developed at Widford, the factory has increasingly re-focussed on volume manufacturing. Matt explained that the J20 capacity growth had been supported by incremental investment over recent years in both processing and packaging. The factory operation has also moved from 3 shift system to annualised hours and now to seasonal shifts to support the production demands.

Additional investment in the factory infrastructure and facilities has also taken place in such areas as water treatment plant, waste energy recovery and process water re-usage. Matt also explained that further capital investment is at present being made to support production of Robinsons Fruit Shoot with a new packaging line, which will include integrated bottle blowing, being installed to increase capacity.

On our tour of the site, we found a very clean and tidy factory with a great deal of evidence of effective infrastructure improvements.

Line 1 has a combination of well established and new state of the art equipment. The line operates with twin Simonazzi vacuum fillers fed by a Kettner bulkglass depalletiser via bottle rinsers. Finished product in 275 ml bottles is packed in the latest Kister tray erector / shrink wrap machine in packs of 12s or 24s, this machine having capability for up to 85 packs per minute.

Production of J2O

Again on Line 3 we saw J2O being produced on well established equipment and one of the features seen on the line was the Aries multipacker which was multipacking J2O bottles in 4’s using wrap-around board.

The tour also took us to Line 4 which is a can line dedicated to 202 cans and filling both 150ml and 250ml sizes. This line is used for supplying traditional mixers, juices and other exotic beverages and shows the versatility of the Widford operation.

The new line, initially to be dedicated to Robinsons Fruit Shoot, was being commissioned and has been laid out to give good working space for efficient operation and movement of materials. The line consists of a SIG Corpoplast Bottle blower, a KHS Integrated ‘Super block’ (Rinser, filler, capper, labeller) and again the latest Kister tray packer. The filler is volumetric and the line will handle 200ml and 300ml bottles with a sports cap.

The visit demonstrated the entrepreneurial nature of Britvic. With innovation being at the heart of their company philosophy, and combined with their investment in processing and packaging, it has brought about the development of J2O, which has defined a new category of adult juice drinks, and Robinsons Fruit Shoot, which is now the No 1 kids drink in the UK.

It was interesting to see how the site is developing from predominantly new product development to high volume production. As Matt explained, the site philosophy is clearly focussed on keeping unit cost low by effective capital investment and by using the high skill level of its employees and their passion for innovation to creatively develop the operation to reach higher levels of plant efficiency. The future for Widford Factory looks exciting with a significant role to play in the continued evolution of both these brands.

On conclusion of the visit John Yates, BBI secretary, on behalf of BBI members thanked Matt for a splendid visit and buffet lunch. John also thanked the Factory tour leaders and congratulated the team on the development of the site into a very interesting and impressive operation.

Brian Gibbs