A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited up to Mnchester to see the Pampers Factory and hear about the latest nappy innovations coming out of the Factory very soon! The t day was due to start at 11am in Manchester . This meant setting of from Chelmsford Train Station at 6am, I’d not left for London that early in years – I honestly don’t know how the commuters do it!
Thankfully the treck across London and round to Euston was pretty painless, I even had time for a spot of breakfast before getting on the Virgin Trains Pendolino. I’ve decided I LOVE the Pendolino, it’s flipping amazing, as someone who has endured a drive up North countless times. sitting on a train for two hours was lovely (that’s when I watched Prisoners!) In seemingly no time at all I was at Manchester Piccadilly (memories of Cosatto in my head!) to meet our taxi to the factory.
I didn’t take any pictures of the Pampers Factory itself, there are very strict on photography on-site, there’s a lot of secret magic stuff and technology that goes into Pampers products, it’s all very ‘Willy Wonka’ infact – so all the photos below were taken by a photographer.
We all assembled in a board room and were introduced to some of the Pampers team, during our presentation we were told that the plant that Pampers are in had been there for 80 years, and Pampers had been manufactured here since 1991. It’s a MASSIVE site, but only has 292 staff – it was also refreshing to hear 40% of the managers are female – the average length of service at the factory is 17.4 YEARS! Crazy!
Next up we heard from Dr. Frank Wiesemann from Pampers – he explained the way that Pampers Nappies had evolved from their humble simple beginnings in 1961 and exactly what goes in to them today. There were some fun demonstrations with Nutella (yes really) and some of the magic ‘Super Absorbers’ that are hidden inside the nappies, the amount of liquid these ‘super absorbers’ can absorb is pretty incredible. We were also shown how the liquid and solids are taken through the top layer with the assitance of some shampoo – it looked, um, spunky.
We also had a little talk from Pampers Ambassador Dr Ellie Cannon, who emphasized the importance of the three words of the Pampers campaign for a baby ‘Love, Sleep and Play’, also we all got a photo opportunity with the good Doctor too.
With that we were whisked off around the factory, no photos of that yet sadly (secret squirrel stuff!!). We saw 20+ raw materials go from finished product in less than 4 seconds. The way all the machines work are pretty incredible and hypnotic – one end of the factory has reels of materials going in and the other has boxes of nappies coming out – it’s incredible! They produce over 5 million nappies a day and perform over 3200 quality tests completed too!
After we’d all had our tour, we assembled for a group photo –
It was fabulous seeing how much technology and science goes into making a simple nappy, and also just how much they’ve changed in the past 10 years!
Thanks so much to Pampers for inviting me along and for their hospitality on the day, it was awesome spending some time ooop North! Hope it’s not too long till I’m back!
Sounds like you had an awesome day. You did make me chuckle with your observations about your 6 a.m. start. I am a late riser. Which is why I stressed also, my early start when I went to the Joe the Juicer event recently. I would love to have gone to the Pampers event for so many reasons. Firstly because I only toilet trained Aaron at the age of 3 so spent 3 years buying Pampers Active. Very loyal to them in fact. Plus I plan on having a second (nature and God permitting) so I hope my journey with nappies is not yet over. Finally because for a couple of years, Pampers were paying for the Google Adwords “new mum online” and it used to make me laugh that we used to jostle for top position in Google searches. I don’t know why I wasn’t on their radar, but silly me, I was neither following them on Twitter nor had I blogged about our use of them. Lesson learned anyhow, but I was gutted the day you all went. Great to see these photos and hear all about it. I love that there is secrecy involved – you know a product is great when they have to protect what makes them unique/special.
Liska xx
Looks like you had a great day. How strange about it being all Willy Wonka. I am from Manchester originally, great city.