During my rourine field inspection to food premises in Kisumu County, Kenya, we visited Coca-Cola- Equator Bottlers Limited in Kisumu to witness how food hygiene was applied in a large scale supply industry. 

The bottling firm prepares in large scale:  soft drinks (soda) and mineral water.

The firm has two production lines: Recycled glass bottles (RGB) and Plastic bottles (PET). 

Raw materials include:

Externally sourced concentrate as patented formula

Crowns and closures

Imported glass

Water sourced as raw water from Lake Victoria and treated at the firm

Fine grade white sugar sourced from Egypt and Saudi Arabia

Caustic (NaOH)  for washing  glass bottles

Chlorine disinfectant

Gases e.g. Nitrogen, Ammonia ,ozone ,Carbon(iv)oxide

All incoming chemicals and devices are inspected for conformance with specs required.

Preparation

a) Production of RGBs

Dirty glass bottles are taken to a warehouse where they are sorted according to brand and cleansed; they are then brought in crates to the production hall.  A machine empties the bottles from crates in the depalatizing area followed by pre-inspection of bottles, carried out by visualizing checking for cracked bottles. The bottles are then dragged via a conveyer belt to the washer. In the washer, a bottle is passed through hot water, into a 1st caustic tank then a second caustic tank. The bottles pass through chlorine disinfectant before a final rinse with water at 80°C. This process takes about half an hour. The clean bottles pass through a siting station, where dirty bottles, foreign bottles and cracked bottles are removed. The bottles move to an Electronic Bottle Inspector (EBI) machine that spots and automatically removes bottles with faults but passed the siting station. The clean, inspected bottles move to the filling machine with pre-prepared formula for specific brand. 60 seconds after filling, the bottles are crowned and date coded as they pass a siting station where proper crowning, filing and date coding has been done before palatizing is done for storage.

b)  Production of PETs

PET bottles are used for products such as juices, soda and bottled water. PETs come as imported pre-formed shapes that are moulded on- site. In the production hall, the Pre-formed shapes are heated and blown into required moulds. They pass through siting stations through the EBI for fault identification.  The ready bottles are filled and date coded and capped using plastic closures. They are then stacked in polythene covered palates for storage before distribution.