Nestlé opens its doors in Anderson

ANDERSON - Anderson assembly lines once carried the steel chassis and frames of automobiles.

Now a product made in Anderson is more likely to travel on a low-friction air conveyor.

On Wednesday, Nestlé Corp. invited Gov. Mitch Daniels, Anderson Mayor Kris Ockomon, members of the media and other guests to attend a "grand opening" ceremony for its production and bottling plant. After a ribbon-cutting, Nestlé provided samples of its chocolate Nesquik beverage.

But the real treat was a tour of the $359 million production and bottling facility that Nestlé touts as state-of-the-art. The tours afforded Anderson a glimpse into the future. It is cold and hard and clean.

"Tourists" were herded into a hallway where they donned white, knee-length coats, white hair nets (for head and facial hair), safety goggles and a headset to hear their guide, Jason, over the din. After scrubbing their hands and applying sanitizer, they stepped out of a hallway and into the massive production area.

Everything was white, gray and silver, except for the yellow safety markings slashed here and there. Concrete floors, massive I-beam supports, white sheet metal and a labyrinth of tubing covered the ceiling. A member of the tour group said "It has that new-car smell."

The tour group entered on the east side, then headed north past the labs where analysts check the Nesquik milk and CoffeeMate creamer for microbes and chemicals. Every day, Jason said, Nestlé receives more than 20 tanker trucks of whole milk, which it separates it into skim milk and cream. It takes milk from 30,000 cows a day to keep the production humming.

The tour group cut to the southwest through the plastics area where polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, is made into bottles of 8, 16, 32, 56 and 64 ounces. Bottles can be stored in one of Nestlé's 10,000-capacity silos or moved directly to the filling area with its enormous stainless steel milk vats. This part of the factory remained hidden because of "proprietary concerns."

The tour group then walked through a passageway into a packing area, stacked high with cardboard-brown palettes loaded with materials to be used in production. From there it was up a staircase onto a catwalk overlooking rows of 16- and 32-ounce bottles where three of five lines were running. The bottles were sterilized, filled, sealed and capped, then rolled out on conveyor belts like yellow Russian dolls with red-cap heads.

Aside from Jason and a few handlers, the tour group saw few people. One or two workers appeared to oversee vast production areas.

These are the new assembly lines of Anderson, and Nestlé represents the new model. Rows of production workers along a massive assembly line have been replaced by a few highly skilled workers managing machines, rather than men, giving the impression of robotic efficiency.

Daniels called Anderson an ideal centerpoint from which spokes of distribution will extend. Ockomon said Anderson's relationship with Nestlé has only begun.

Growth is already taking place. A new section of the plant juts out from the west and north sides of the building, early indications of a $170 million expansion that began in August 2008 and is expected to come on line in 2011.

Many people who attended Wednesday's event drove from downtown Anderson. They included city and county employees, police officers and business people. Some passed the former site of Guide Lamp at 29th Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard on their way to the Nestlé facility.

Guide has been reduced to mounds of rubble, the detritus of the old way. Meanwhile, 45 blocks away, the new way is humming along on the only mass assembly line left in Anderson.