It was early June of 2016 when I received an invite to get an inside peek of the Coca-Cola FEMSA Plant. Who am I to say no to this rare opportunity? I immediately said yes to attend the tour.
Fast forward to June 16, 2016, together with the select bloggers of Cagayan de Oro, we travelled towards the nearby municipality of Villanueva, Misamis Oriental (probably an hour away from CDO) to see where the bottle of Coke starts.
To be honest, I have been imagining what the Coke plant looks like inside. I can still remember that I get so excited when passing by the old Coke Plant within Cagayan de Oro. These were the filled bottles lined up and visible to the public. This plant used to be at where the newly SM City CDO 2 is being constructed until it was moved to Villa (Villanueva) in 2011.
For many, a field trip to the Coke Plant was memorable that I did not have until the day came where my fascination was answered.
The bottle starts here – at the Coca-Cola FEMSA Plant in Misamis Oriental. This massive MisOr plant has a land area of 11.2 hectares and has 5 production lines as of July 2016.
The process starts with the preparation of the materials and ingredients, then the recycled bottles go through the state of the art equipment to clean, sanitize, and inspect the bottles to be ready for production. Each bottle has to pass through the different process of inspection to ensure the highest quality of the product before it reaches the Coke aficionados.
Aside from the bottles, this Coke FEMSA Plant in MisOr also produces the pet-bottled beverages made of plastic resin and a form of polyester. The pet bottles are the preferred packaging for the majority of the people travelling and on the go. According to Coke FEMSA, their Misamis Oriental Plant can produce to as much as 63,000 bottles per hour. This plant also is unique from the rest of the plants across the country, the MisOr Plant has the only Swing Line among all Coca-Cola Plants in the Philippines which can produce both carbonated drinks and water.
Once the bottles are filled, they’re brought to the warehouse of the plant and then off they go to the commercial unit of Coca-Cola FEMSA, which is the Distribution Centers. To this date, this plant provides the freshly bottled beverages to a closely about 60,000 establishments (Wow, that’s a lot!) under the CDO Region which covers the majority of Northern Mindanao and CARAGA.
After the tour, we were also brought to a sari-sari store on a nearby barangay. It was the store of Nanay Aracelli who has built the Nanay Foodhaus fronting the Philippine Sinter Corporation since 1994. For over two decades Nanay Aracelli has been exclusively selling Coke products. Their partnership with Coke has been able to send her kids to school and is a testimony of her commitment to Coke FEMSA. Nanay Aracelli also received a gift from Coke FEMSA to expand and renovate her store – the Coke way!
More than the bottle, it’s the people behind the beverage making the whole coke Happiness experience better. To date, Coca-Cola FEMSA employs about 10,000 people in its 19 plants and 60 sales officers across the Philippines.
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