Bubbling with enthusiasm
General Soft Drinks will commission the equipment at its new site in the Marsa Industrial Estate in the coming days, marking the start of a another phase in the company's 30-year-long history. GSD outgrew its Qormi plant many years ago. It had started...
General Soft Drinks will commission the equipment at its new site in the Marsa Industrial Estate in the coming days, marking the start of a another phase in the company's 30-year-long history.
GSD outgrew its Qormi plant many years ago. It had started off as storage for a beverage wholesaler George Spiteri, who started bottling Coca Cola in 1952 but once it was taken over by the Mizzi family, it soon spread to adjacent plots.
While it grew, the residential area simultaneously crept closer, resulting in a factory with an awkward layout and a flow of traffic that had become a nuisance to residents and the public, despite the company's best efforts to reduce any inconvenience. As space ran out, GSD also had to rent out warehousing on other sites which greatlyincreased the amount of transport between sites.
It has long wanted to move out but its previous attempt to find a suitable site had not worked out.
"It was a logistical nightmare," general manager Maria Micallef said.
"In Qormi, there were a lot of additional costs resulting from the double handling. We require a considerable amount of storage for our raw materials and so are constantly transporting materials in and out."
Now, finally, a massive new factory has taken over a previously abandoned 33,000 sq.m. site, forming a U-shape around an Enemalta distribution centre. Starting off with a blank sheet, the company was able to design a logical flow from formation of the PET bottles to production and warehousing.
"I and the project manager Brian Galea often visit factories elsewhere to keep up to date with best practice. So we were able to pick and choose the best of all we saw.
"It was designed to have all the services, such as syrup, compressed air and heat generation, at the shortest possible distance from production," Ms Micallef explained. The design was so impressive that it won an award from Coca Cola for the way the flow of materials conserved energy.
"But the important thing is that the new factory - which will be officially launched by summer - will make us competitive on a European level," she said.
Overall GSD has invested €25 million, which includes a new PET line and a new fleet of trucks.
The truck fleet, which is currently made up of open-sided vehicles, will be changed to closed ones by summer.
"Since PET products should not be left in direct sunlight, closed vehicles are preferable," she explained.
The trucks are Euro 5 compliant - the latest certification for trucks - and got a waiver on the registration tax under a government scheme to incentivise environmentally-friendly vehicles.
The company has invested in smarter plastic display trays as well as in wheeled-trays to help the retailers. The old plastic crates, which will not be required in such quantities, are being ground down and re-exported to Spain where the granules are being made into pallets to replace the current wooden ones.
The site itself has various innovations. For example, its warehouse has a span of 35m, more what you would expect from an aircraft hangar than a drinks factory. C&F Schembri actually had to manufacture the beams on site as it would have been physically impossible to transport them from his workshop on the road network.
GSD will also re-use the reverse osmosis water that it produces as often as possible - and will pipe the salty water outflow from the RO plant straight into the sea.
The plant will also use building management systems to reduce power consumption.
"It is a massive area; I cannot afford to go round turning off the lights!" Ms Micallef joked.
Areas that generate heat are well insulated from those that require cooling, which also helps. However, the plant will not use solar energy.
"Our calculations showed that the return on investment would have been 50 years so it was not justified as things stand. But we took into consideration that the situation might change and the roof has been designed to take the extra weight should we decide to use them in the future."
The new factory will make the logistics much easier once it is up and running - but the real trick was to come up with a migration plan that ensured enough stocks were available of all its products to meet seasonal demand. First water stocks were built up and then the line was switched to soft drinks to build up supplies of those in time for the thirsty summer. Once the new line is in production, the existing PET line at Qormi will be dismantled and moved to Marsa and the 24/7 shift system will be scaled back to two shifts.
"The new line is more efficient so all in all we will have over double the capacity that we had with the old line alone," she said.
"This means that we will only need to run two shifts but there will be the spare capacity to deal with growth in the future."
The Qormi site will only be used for production in glass, for the foreseeable future.
"It is too early to say what will happen with glass but international statistics indicate that glass would constitute 15-20 per cent of a portfolio - mostly for 33cl bottles," she said.
Managing director Brian Mizzi said that all the 260 employees have been kept on - some were retrained as not as many production staff were required thanks to higher levels of automation.
He admitted that at one time, the company had to stop and look honestly at its options.
"When we knew that we were going to have to make the transition from glass to PET, we had to consider whether to make the huge investment this would represent - which represents quite a risk and quite a commitment - or whether we should limit ourselves to importing. We commissioned an independent report which concluded that the investment would be feasible, which meant that all the jobs were safeguarded," he said.
"As we grow and develop, no doubt the workforce will increase. From the production point of view, in order to remain price competitive in Europe, have to be as lean as possible, using the most technically-advanced machinery. We are competing in a small market against megamachines that are very cost effective. So we need staff with more technical roles. We also need to boost our marketing and distribution, which is our strength as a company."
Mr Mizzi said that the company has many other plans for the future but will spend a year or two mking sure that things settle at the new plant. But clearly, with a state-of-the-art facility and new products like the Schweppes range, the company would be foolish not to maximise its distribution system, which reaches every corner of the islands.
"We will take it one step at a time. I don't believe in doing too many things at once," Mr Mizzi said.
Could the future hold a return to the importation of wines and spirits, which the company did some years ago but dropped?
"A major consideration when wines and spirits were dropped was the lack of space. Obviously this will now be reconsidered," Ms Micallef added.
GSD outgrew its Qormi plant many years ago. It had started off as storage for a beverage wholesaler George Spiteri, who started bottling Coca Cola in 1952 but once it was taken over by the Mizzi family, it soon spread to adjacent plots.
While it grew, the residential area simultaneously crept closer, resulting in a factory with an awkward layout and a flow of traffic that had become a nuisance to residents and the public, despite the company's best efforts to reduce any inconvenience. As space ran out, GSD also had to rent out warehousing on other sites which greatlyincreased the amount of transport between sites.
It has long wanted to move out but its previous attempt to find a suitable site had not worked out.
"It was a logistical nightmare," general manager Maria Micallef said.
"In Qormi, there were a lot of additional costs resulting from the double handling. We require a considerable amount of storage for our raw materials and so are constantly transporting materials in and out."
Now, finally, a massive new factory has taken over a previously abandoned 33,000 sq.m. site, forming a U-shape around an Enemalta distribution centre. Starting off with a blank sheet, the company was able to design a logical flow from formation of the PET bottles to production and warehousing.
"I and the project manager Brian Galea often visit factories elsewhere to keep up to date with best practice. So we were able to pick and choose the best of all we saw.
"It was designed to have all the services, such as syrup, compressed air and heat generation, at the shortest possible distance from production," Ms Micallef explained. The design was so impressive that it won an award from Coca Cola for the way the flow of materials conserved energy.
"But the important thing is that the new factory - which will be officially launched by summer - will make us competitive on a European level," she said.
Overall GSD has invested €25 million, which includes a new PET line and a new fleet of trucks.
The truck fleet, which is currently made up of open-sided vehicles, will be changed to closed ones by summer.
"Since PET products should not be left in direct sunlight, closed vehicles are preferable," she explained.
The trucks are Euro 5 compliant - the latest certification for trucks - and got a waiver on the registration tax under a government scheme to incentivise environmentally-friendly vehicles.
The company has invested in smarter plastic display trays as well as in wheeled-trays to help the retailers. The old plastic crates, which will not be required in such quantities, are being ground down and re-exported to Spain where the granules are being made into pallets to replace the current wooden ones.
The site itself has various innovations. For example, its warehouse has a span of 35m, more what you would expect from an aircraft hangar than a drinks factory. C&F Schembri actually had to manufacture the beams on site as it would have been physically impossible to transport them from his workshop on the road network.
GSD will also re-use the reverse osmosis water that it produces as often as possible - and will pipe the salty water outflow from the RO plant straight into the sea.
The plant will also use building management systems to reduce power consumption.
"It is a massive area; I cannot afford to go round turning off the lights!" Ms Micallef joked.
Areas that generate heat are well insulated from those that require cooling, which also helps. However, the plant will not use solar energy.
"Our calculations showed that the return on investment would have been 50 years so it was not justified as things stand. But we took into consideration that the situation might change and the roof has been designed to take the extra weight should we decide to use them in the future."
The new factory will make the logistics much easier once it is up and running - but the real trick was to come up with a migration plan that ensured enough stocks were available of all its products to meet seasonal demand. First water stocks were built up and then the line was switched to soft drinks to build up supplies of those in time for the thirsty summer. Once the new line is in production, the existing PET line at Qormi will be dismantled and moved to Marsa and the 24/7 shift system will be scaled back to two shifts.
"The new line is more efficient so all in all we will have over double the capacity that we had with the old line alone," she said.
"This means that we will only need to run two shifts but there will be the spare capacity to deal with growth in the future."
The Qormi site will only be used for production in glass, for the foreseeable future.
"It is too early to say what will happen with glass but international statistics indicate that glass would constitute 15-20 per cent of a portfolio - mostly for 33cl bottles," she said.
Managing director Brian Mizzi said that all the 260 employees have been kept on - some were retrained as not as many production staff were required thanks to higher levels of automation.
He admitted that at one time, the company had to stop and look honestly at its options.
"When we knew that we were going to have to make the transition from glass to PET, we had to consider whether to make the huge investment this would represent - which represents quite a risk and quite a commitment - or whether we should limit ourselves to importing. We commissioned an independent report which concluded that the investment would be feasible, which meant that all the jobs were safeguarded," he said.
"As we grow and develop, no doubt the workforce will increase. From the production point of view, in order to remain price competitive in Europe, have to be as lean as possible, using the most technically-advanced machinery. We are competing in a small market against megamachines that are very cost effective. So we need staff with more technical roles. We also need to boost our marketing and distribution, which is our strength as a company."
Mr Mizzi said that the company has many other plans for the future but will spend a year or two mking sure that things settle at the new plant. But clearly, with a state-of-the-art facility and new products like the Schweppes range, the company would be foolish not to maximise its distribution system, which reaches every corner of the islands.
"We will take it one step at a time. I don't believe in doing too many things at once," Mr Mizzi said.
Could the future hold a return to the importation of wines and spirits, which the company did some years ago but dropped?
"A major consideration when wines and spirits were dropped was the lack of space. Obviously this will now be reconsidered," Ms Micallef added.