Tetley’s Eaglescliffe factory creates the fastest round bag machines in both company and world history!

In 1989, Tetley invented the round tea bag to cater to the growing habit of brewing tea in mugs. It was the result of five years of development work and it made Tetley the market leader at the time. Less than 30 years later, Tetley continues to push boundaries. After extensive efforts by the Carton Production team at the Eaglescliffe factory - the largest tea bag manufacturing plant in the world - the bags produced per minute by the catering machines has now reached a staggering 3000, making it not only the fastest round bag machine in our company history, but the fastest in world history!

All Tetley products for the UK and Canadian markets are produced at the Eaglescliffe factory located in the North East of the UK. Recently, there has been a lot of work on the catering tea bag machines to increase the number of bags produced per minute. These catering machines produce large packs of 275, 420, 440, 500, 1100 and 1540 bags to the retail and catering markets in the UK so a faster output means faster time to market.

So, how did they do it?

As part of the old collation process, over a 120 components were removed from each of the 3 catering tea bag producing machines to simplify them. This process has also reduced the annual maintenance spend and maintenance hours spent on these machines.

The amount of run hours for a machine ‘cutter’ (a blade which cuts out the tissue) has also dramatically improved alongside the increase in speed. One particular machine has smashed the site record for the longest amount of cutting hours achieved. Its lifespan is now at 1724 hours, versus the old record of 1040 hours, which had been consistent since 2011.

Significant quality tests have been carried out to profile the heating parameters required to achieve such speeds.

But the work doesn’t stop here! The team is already looking to potentially increase production to 3500 bags per minute!

This is a significant achievement and we congratulate everyone involved, especially the Carton Production team of Ian Childs, Alan Bushby and Alan Rigg and Steve Heward for their consistent hard work.