Today P4 class visited Tayto Factory in Tandragee, to learn the process used to make crisps using Irish potatoes.
We were welcomed by Mr Tayto and got a few photographs with this absolute celebrity.
Our lovely guides were Catherine, John and Joshua.
As the factory produces something to eat, we needed to wear a mesh hat and a plastic apron to make sure that we were not bringing any germs into the factory.
Today Tayto Castle has a huge factory, lots of buildings and sheds. The factory uses a lot of technology (machines, scanners, cameras) and has many people working there.
Dumper trucks are used to move the potatoes from lorries into the cold store.
Here the potatoes are stored in 1 ton boxes and the cold store can hold hundreds of these boxes at a time.
One of the best varieties of potato to make crisps is Lady Claire.
Fork lift drivers tip the potatoes into the hopper and the process begins.
We got to see the journey of the potato from cold store, through the hopper, washer, peelers, slicers, friers and flavouring drums.
As we walked through the factory we saw the machines that are used to carry the flavoured crisps to the bagging area, how the bags are filled and sealed tight.
Workers pack the multipacks into big boxes, then, machines lift and stack these big boxes before wrapping them for storage. The machines that do this last job, used to be in the DeLorean car factory in Belfast. We heard the film Back To The Future used a DeLorean car for the time-travel.
The storage shed is the width of 1 and the length of 2 football pitches. That is a lot of space! That is a lot of crisps.
We got to taste crisps that were just hot off the conveyor belt.
Finally, we tasted the Onion Rings snacks, delicious!
At the end of our trip we were given a multipack of Cheese N Onion and said a huge thankyou to Catherine, Joshua and John.
Tayto crisps are shipped to 43 countries around the world. That the most popular flavour is Cheese N Onion and that over 1 million packets of crisps are made each day.
We had a fabulous trip to the Tayto Factory in Tandragee.
