Glass Bottles and Jars
Beatson Clark, one of the UK's biggest bottle manufacturers, makes a whopping 455 million bottles a year and turns over around £40 million. This presumably means that the average cost of a bottle or jar is about ten pence - no wonder it is worth recycling them. Of the 300 or so employees we only see two in the film as the machines, once set up, can work pretty well on their own. The most famous appearance of course was "the man with the oily stick". It was wonderful to watch him in the flesh, but you mustn't worry too much about the possibility of him "burning his hand off" as the commentary warns - for, as the cameraman recalls, the fellow had taken the precaution of donning a particularly thick pair of heat-proof gloves. Why exactly he was needed to poke the machine with his stick was never discovered, as none of the crew could get near enough to ask!
Frederic Robinson is a family business, and although they provide bottling for over 100 different products, they are probably better known as brewers. They have no association with the famous cordial producer of the same name.
The story of the company starts in 1838, when William Robinson bought the "Unicorn Inn" in Stockport, from where the family first started brewing beer. They now sell a wide variety of beers, and own a number of Inns in the north-west of England.
The bottling plant that you see in the film is situated in Bredbury, Cheshire, and was opened in the 1970s, although the company have been involved in bottling since 1908. Over 90% of their bottling is now for external customers, with over 25 different bottles being catered for on the production line.
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Production Notes
Locations:
Beatson Clark Ltd (bottle manufacturer), Rotherham, S Yorkshire;
Frederic Robinson Ltd (bottle filling plant), Bredbury, Cheshire.