Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Thursday 26 Feb 2010-03-02



Today I was supposed to meet up with Hanolet and go through to Sharpeville,


Unfortunately the people of Sharpeville are currently on strike. The roads in to the location have been closed and apparently it’s getting a bit chaotic there, so I headed out with Sharon instead.


We drove through to Witbank to the water plant I’ve mentioned before.


I got to take a few pictures of the machinery and the process involved in bottling the water, pretty interesting to see! The bottle necks are made first, they kind of look like little test tubes, these are put on a conveyor belt of sorts and heated up slowly, and once they have reached the correct temperature they are placed inside the ‘blower’

A machine that then blows a forceful gust of warm air into the bottle neck/ test tube

The heated plastic gives, filling the chosen mould and creating a completed bottle!


This is a quick process, but things do go wrong, if the plastic is not heated correctly the blower just destroys the little test tube! Bottles also can come out slightly deformed... These are disposed of and the bottles being kept are thoroughly checked for leaks, deformities, discoloration ad so on. The bottles are then sent to the plant to be re-checked and finally filled!


I was disappointed about the Sharpeville strike thing, but today turned out really well,


I got to see an interesting process and understand how it all operates… Hopefully the Strikes let up soon so we can continue our work in Sharpeville!

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