Coke factory

Sadly, the Coke facility did not allow pictures inside. I hope to go back someday with permission to take pictures... with my digital camera they can delete any that they feel compromise their bottling secrets.

While Coke is the name on the side this plant is not owned by Coke. Coke does not own any of its bottling plants (that I know of). Why? The profit margin in syrup is much, much higher than in bottling.

They had a cool carpet in the lobby. However much I wanted to rip it up and take it home with me I suspect they would have noticed.

Here's the class I accompanied to the factory.

I apologize because the pictures don't match the hype. Being inside the factory was beyond cool. It was surprisingly small. The actual area of filling the bottles and cans was no more than 3000 square feet. (They can only do one flavor for cans, glass bottles and plastic bottles at any time.)

The adjacent warehouse where the newly filled bottles go is much, much larger... bigger than a football field.

The quality control was interesting: While filling cans of Coke Zero the cans were quickly scanned. Any with imperfections were kicked out. It was shockingly common. 1 in 50 cans? A worker then physically inspected them. If deemed OK he would put it back in the que. If accidentally tipped over he would automatically throw it away. One of the students asked me, "Sir, why are they throwing that away? It looks fine."

I replied, "I don't know but it makes me sad. I wish they'd give them to me!"

Out in the packaging area we watched cases of plastic bottles of Sprite getting getting wrapped in plastic. Shockingly 1 in 10 cases had problems. Two workers were working furiously to remove the problem cases and put them back in the que.

For automated systems I was very surprised to see as many problems as I saw.

Maybe that's why they didn't want pictures.