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The Citizen recently had the very rare opportunity to take our cameras inside the beverage plant at Tiger Brands in Germiston.
The company, one of the country’s largest food producers, has been part of South African homes for generations, manufacturing everyone’s favourite childhood drink.
The company, now known as Tiger Brands, was founded as Brookes LEMOS and Moir’s by Murray & Roberts in 1981.
At the time they produced beverages like Oros, Lemos, Multi Z and Sodastream concentrates.
After having bought the company from Bromor Foods in 2000, Tiger Brands are still producing the iconic Rose’s cordials and has just recently added two new flavours to the range.
Rose’s lime juice was the world’s first commercially produced fruit concentrate, which was patented in 1867.
The popular sports drink, Energade, also became part of their staple between 2000 and 2006.
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Guided by plant manager Ajay Bachulal, the tour started at the point where the bottles for the Oros were transformed from tube-sized containers to the 2 litre bottles of concentrate you buy at the shop.
Production manager Molefe Mosebi explained how small tubes are heated and blown up to the required size on the production line – whether it be the 750ml bottle or the 2L bottles.
The tubes are placed into an oven, where they are heated to soften the hard plastic, after which they get send to the blower to blow air into the heated the tube to get it to the required size.
The bottles are then filled with the Oros concentrate and capped after which they go through a camera to check for any leaks or other defects in the product.
Once the bottles have been checked, they move along a conveyor belt to get labelled, and they are then grouped into sixes to be packaged.
20 000 bottles of Oros go through this process per hour, and about one million litres of Oros concentrate are produced at the plant every day.