All language subtitles for Inside.the.Factory.S10E05.Breakfast.Cereal.1080p.iP.WEB-DL.AAC2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

They say that breakfast is one of
the most important meals of the day.

- Lovely stuff. Put it on my tab.
- You haven't got a tab.

That's what they all say.

SHE LAUGHS

So when I'm working hard hosting
the UK's premier

factory-based TV show,

I couldn't agree more.

And this factory is massive,

so I need to keep my strength up.

Can someone throw us a couple
of sausages on?

In the UK, we crunch through -
get this -

a billion boxes of cereal
every year.

So, luckily, I've come to one of
Europe's biggest factories

that's dedicated to making
the stuff.

That's going to take
a big bottle of milk.

Everything here is supersized.

Holy granola, that is big!

With massive machines...

Where is everybody?

..and an automated
process...

Hey! Get out!

..making multigrain cereal.

And while I find out exactly
what goes into your breakfast bowls,

Cherry's drawn the short straw,

because she's learning how
to clean up.

Oh, yeah. I'm getting
down and dirty...

No. No, no, no, no, no.

..discovering the do's and don'ts
of dishwashers.

- You don't rinse?
- We don't rinse plates.

And historian Ruth Goodman is
in search of the man from Sheffield

who revolutionised spoons.

So he doesn't set out to make
a better spoon,

this is a man
who wants to make a better gun?

This factory produces

120 million boxes
of cereal every year,

and I'm going to show you how they
make every single flake.

This is Inside The Factory.

Hygiene, very important.

Hygiene again.

That's... Oh, that's the wrong one.
DRYER BLOWS

Where's the water?
There it is.

Whatever happened to just taps?

A tap you turned on, a bit of soap.
Lovely. Now it's all this.

Look at that. That tap's
now turned into a hand-dryer.

What a time to be alive.

And now we're going over
to this bit now.

It's like Blackpool Fun House.
Here we go.

# Da-da, da-da, da-da-da, da-da-da. #

And this is like council swimming
baths when you're a kid.

Get your feet in there
with all verrucas and toenails.

Bit more sanitiser.
Give them a wipe.

Through the thing.

Absolutely spotless.

This is the Kellogg's factory
in Wrexham

and they've been making cereal here
for almost half a century.

That's a lot of bowls of brekkie.

- # Wake up, it's a beautiful morning
- Wake up

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

This factory runs around the clock.

A temple of high-tech...

Nice.

..making many
of the nation's favourite cereals

like Bran Flakes
and Fruit 'n Fibre.

# Wake up, wake up... #

But today I'm following Special K,

and I'm learning how
they create these 440g boxes.

Got one! Come here.

- # Wake up
- Wake up, it's a beautiful morning

- # The sun shining for your eyes
- Wake up... #

And to get my morning going,

I'm trekking across this massive site
to ingredients intake.

# Wake up, it's a beautiful
morning... #

Now, excuse all the belts
and buckles.

Here's Craig Williams,
who's in charge, to explain all.

# The sun shining for your eyes... #

Good morning, Craig.
You all right, pal?

- Morning, Paddy.
You OK?
- Yeah. Yeah, well, I am OK,

but I've got to be honest,

I've never started a show
in this kind of get-up.

It's a little bit 50 Shades Of Grey.
What are we doing?

Well, all will be revealed.

So we put all our tankers in here
and this one contains rice.

Which, for me,
is a little bit strange,

because obviously there's
certain cereals that are just rice,

but I didn't think this particular
cereal would contain it.

- 47% of the flake is actually rice.
- Can I have a look?

Yeah, that's why we're wearing
these, Paddy.

Let's go up and have a gander.

Like Challenge Anneka,
this, isn't it?

Are you on my bum?

Right, then.
We'll connect one of these to

- the back of your harness
so we don't lose you.
- OK. Yeah.

Don't want you falling off a tanker.

It turns out the harness isn't
for fun,

but for safety...

It's like a seat belt

- and then it gets you like that.
- Yeah, that's it.
- Yeah, yeah.

..because we're climbing on top of
the tanker

to take a sample of
the rice delivery.

- Don't know if you want to do it?
- Yeah, yeah, can do.

Oh, that's a first for me.

Give us one more.

What kind of rice is that, then?

It's a type of rice,
if you do much cooking at home,

like you'd use in a risotto.

We use that because it's high
in starch,

so once it's cooked it gets like
a sticky texture.

- Right.
- And it helps bond
the flake together.

- Right, so now we've took
the sample...
- Yeah.

- ..we're going to give it
to Paul.
- OK, no problem.

- OK.
- He'll do the relevant testing
on it

- to make sure it meets
the right specification.
- Yeah.

First off, Paul makes sure

the rice is a mix of big
and small grains,

which will give texture to
the finished flakes.

MICROWAVE PINGS

Oh, hang on.

Looks like someone's peckish.

It's OK, though.
Apparently it's part of the test.

Paul's checking the rice hasn't
picked up any nasty tastes or smells.

And the scores are in.

- How's it looking, Paul?
- Rice is all good, Paddy.

Belting. So we can load it
in now.

- Yeah, let's get it going.
- Right, OK. Load it up.

Start the clock.
Breakfast is under way.

# I'm walking on sunshine... #

To make 350,000 boxes
of cereal every day,

this massive factory
has four 100-tonne,

30-metre-high silos...

..just for the rice.

And there's another three silos
full of wheat.

So 47% of our flake
is made up by rice

and the other's wholewheat.

Around 37% wholewheat.

Well, I'm glad you said that, Craig,
because through the magic of telly,

I've sent Cherry down to the farm

to find out exactly
how it's harvested.

The wheat for your cereal,
Paddy, needs dry weather to harvest,

and the somewhat
changeable British climate

is making that tricky.

It's been such a soggy summer.

It's been raining
what feels like nonstop.

But I've just had the call from
Farmer Stephen

to say he thinks that it's dry enough
to harvest the wheat.

Fingers crossed.

I'm in Northamptonshire,

meeting Stephen Evans,
who runs a 1,600-acre farm...

- Lovely to see you.
- Really nice to meet you.

..and grows 2,000 tonnes of wheat
a year,

half of which goes to
the cereal factory.

And today there's just
one field left to harvest.

- Has the rain been a total pain?
- Oh, it's been a horrible year.

It's made life very difficult.

Why can't you harvest
when it's just rained?

The grain, if it's too wet,
will go mouldy in the shed.

I mean, how much money do you lose
if that happens?

It'll be tens of thousands across
the farm.

So we've invested everything
and we really need this.

Oh, my gosh.

More rain is on the horizon,
but the last few sunny days means

this 25-acre field should
be dry enough to harvest.

We just need to do a moisture test
and see if it's good to go.

The stakes are really high.

There's a lot riding on this.

So this is our electronic
moisture tester.

So we need the moisture
of this grain to be 15 or less.

15% moisture or less,
or we're in trouble today.

That's right.

- Oh!
- 14.9.
- So is it go time?

I think we'd better go.

With the weather
forecast threatening,

it's a race against time.

But the 15-tonne combine harvester
is ready for action.

It's absolutely amazing!

It's just the most enormous,

loudest monster of a machine
I've ever seen.

Yeah, ten metres wide.
It's amazing what they'll process.

I've seen a few farm machines
in my time,

but this one is on another level.

- Yeah.
- Woohoo!

To make sure the valuable
crop is gathered

before the rain comes,

Stephen calls in another harvester
from a neighbouring farm.

Today, it's all hands on deck.

There we are. Take a seat.

Look at this.

So we'll put the front header
in gear.

Look at those teeth!

So that's the knife
that will cut the crop.

- That is one hell of a knife.
- Right, here goes.

- Whoa, look at that!
- So, we're off.

So this rotating wheel
is then pulling it all

into the body of the machine,

- which is like a mini factory
back there.
- Oh, it is.

A combine harvester
gets its name

because it combines the three
stages of harvesting.

First reaping,

where the front header cuts
the stalks of wheat.

Next threshing, to shake
the ears from the stalks.

And finally winnowing, to separate
the wheat from the chaff,

the unwanted husks.

The straw and the chaff fly out
the back

to fertilise the field
for next year.

The grain which we use
for cereals

is filling up
the tank behind us.

How much are you collecting
in one go?

This machine currently is doing
about 30 tonnes per hour,

so that's a lot of bowls of cereals.

In fact, it's enough

to produce nearly 2 million bowls
of our cereal.

And we've got two
of these monster machines

working flat out to get
the harvest finished.

I hope Paddy appreciates how much
work has gone into this.

So do I.

It's about time we emptied.

Once the grain tank is full...

- Oh, here he comes!
- Here he is.
- There we go.

- Hello.
- Right, so let's hope Frank
is good at catching.

It needs to be emptied as quickly
as possible

and we don't need to pause
the harvest to unload...

He's absolutely nailed it.

..because the trailer comes to us.

It's like someone's just turned
the tap on max.

- That can go into the store.
- Off he goes.

With two combine harvesters,
it takes just an hour and a half

to gather 90 tonnes
of wheat from this final field.

We've dodged the rain...

..and the freshly harvested crop
is taken to a dry barn.

Is this everything done?
Have you finished the harvest?

We've finished now,
we're over the line.

It's such a relief. The weather
won't affect us any more.

The wheat will be sent to the cereal
factory to be transformed

into 72 million servings
of breakfast flakes.

Paddy, I've got 800 tonnes of wheat
for you.

I hope it's enough.

I think that should keep us
ticking over, Cherry.

Mind you, I'm still getting to grips
with the size of this place.

It's a whopping 52,000 square metres!

And using the traditional
TV measuring system,

that's bigger than seven
football pitches.

Feeling fitter already.

I'm definitely getting my steps in.

We've had to put a wide
angle lens on the drone

just to get this shot!

From the huge silos at intake,

I'm following our rice
and wheat to the mini silos...

..where I've been told to look out

for factory food designer
Lizzie Waiting.

- You all right, Lizzie?
- Hey, Paddy, how are you doing?

- Keeping busy?
- Oh, just about.
- I just did a rhyming thing.

It's all right. Now, listen,

for the good licence-fee-paying
people at home,

what are we doing here?

So this room is
where all of the grains come to

after they've just been off-loaded.

So above us are all the silos.

Now, there's about 80 tonnes of
the four key ingredients

that go into the multigrain cereal.

So we've got the rice
that you've just seen.

- Yeah.
- We've got the wheat
and we've got two types of barley.

So this is the wheat,

which is really important
for the structure of the flake,

it holds it all together,
but it's a whole grain,

so it adds fibre, it's really good
for your heart and digestive system.

Oh, OK.

Now, that's definitely changed from
when I saw it with Cherry.

- What's been done to it?
- This is cracked wheat.

It's been taken to a mill
and then it's been cleaned

to get rid of any impurities.

And then those kernels are moistened
a little bit

and then they're just cracked
a little bit.

Random question,
how do you clean wheat?

Just with water and a bit of

- scrubbing power.
- So it's just like
how you clean yourself at home?

- Yeah.
- You get in the bath,
you have a little bit of a scrub.

Yeah, exactly. Just no shower gel.

Oh, right.

SHE CHUCKLES

The other two main ingredients
are kibbled barley,

which are crushed whole grains...

It's almost
like tiny little stones.

It's quite hard.

..and finer-textured
malted barley flour.

From here,

our cereals rush along pipes into
one of four enormous cookers.

Whoa, this is massive!

# Stand back... #

Holy granola, that is big!

# Stand back... #

Lizzie, quick question.

14 cookers, massive room -
where is everyone?

So these are quite self-sufficient.

- Right.
- We've got them all pre-set

to make sure
that as one cook finishes,

another one still going,
and there's a continuous feed

of cereal going to
the next part of the process.

In one cook, how much cereal is that?

Around about 740 kilos.

That's about 1,500 boxes of cereal,

or 24,500 bowls of cereal.

Wowsers!

So the cook is in three stages.

For the first stage,

you have the cookers rotating,

so all the ingredients
are mixed together,

and we add in lots of hot steam.

# This heat... #

A jet of steam is blasted into
the cooker at 125 degrees Celsius,

adding moisture to the mix
and starting the cooking process.

# Give me steam

# And how you feel to make it real

# Real as any place you've been

# Get a life with
the dreamer's dream... #

It's very similar to if you were
making a risotto at home.

- You have your stock and your rice.
- Right.

You mix and heat it,

and it gets thicker
and it starts to swell.

That's the same process
that we've got going on in here.

# I need steam

# Feel the steam all around me... #

So when I'm looking at a cereal,

it's very, very dry and flaky.

Surely we don't want
to be adding more moisture to it.

Is it not going to make it soggy?

Well, actually, Paddy, we need
to add even more moisture to it.

- My word.
- So at this stage,
we actually add in

about a third extra moisture.

- We add this in.
- Oh, now, now, now.
I'm not a medical person,

but someone needs
to drink more water.

SHE LAUGHS

This is, in fact,
the flavour solution we add in

after the pre-steam.

So in here we have malt,

we have sugar,
salt and water.

- Can I smell that?
- Yes, you can smell it.

Have a little...

It's almost like a sweet
and sour smell, that.

The flavouring is added
to the cooker,

which slowly revolves for an hour,

mixing all the ingredients
thoroughly as they cook.

If we go around there, we can go
and take a little look at it.

- Thought you'd never ask.
- Come on, then.

PADDY CHUCKLES

Three hours
after the rice was delivered,

our mix is cooked and we've taken
the first step towards

breakfast cereal heaven.

Beautiful.

All of this has just been dumped out
of that cooker

and is coming along
the Archimedes' screw...

- Dumped?
- Yes. It's not the most
romant...
- Placed, placed.

It's not the most romantic word,

but we go with it.

PADDY LAUGHS

It's lovingly placed
into this Archimedes' screw.

Still looks nothing like cereal
that I recognise.

No, so the most important part
about this is it's now cooked,

so that means it's ready to get
all that moisture back out.

- So we put it in and now we need
to take it back out again.
- Right.

- It does smell lovely, though.
- Yes, yes.
- It smells gorgeous.

- That's all those cooked flavours
coming through.
- Yeah.

So, to save your fingers,
I've brought you some

so you can have a little closer
look at it.

- Oh, right. That's that?
- That is that, yeah.

- God, that is hot.
- Yes, yeah.

It's not very wet,

but there's definitely still quite
a bit of moisture in there.

It's all moist now,
but the next stage of the process

is to try and get
all that moisture out

to get to that
lovely crunchy cereal.

I'd love to try that,
but I'm missing one key ingredient -

spoons.

And that, viewers, is my clever link
to everyone's favourite historian,

Ruth Goodman.

She's visiting somewhere
that makes the best of 'em.

Sheffield, the Steel City.

Fed by iron ore and coal
mined from the Pennines,

Sheffield's metalworks put the city
on the map

and they were particularly famous
for their cutlery.

But it's one very specific piece
of cutlery

that I'm in Sheffield
to find out about.

And not just any old spoon,
but the stainless steel spoon.

I'm at the Kelham Island Museum,
a historic industrial site,

to meet curator of industry
and metalwork Emma Paragreen.

So, Sheffield has a really
long history

of cutlery making,
doesn't it?

It does indeed.

It goes right back to
the 13th century.

- OK.
- And then Chaucer talks
about a Sheffield thwytel,

- which is an early knife.
- OK.

OK.
But where do spoons come into it?

Spoons have been around
for millennia -

spoons made in bone, wood,
even glass and ceramics.

In terms of a metal spoon,

we're talking really
the Tudor period

and then into the Elizabethan age.

And what sort of metal were they?

A lot of them were pewter.

- It's quite heavy though, isn't it?
- Mm.

And, of course, pewter tastes.

Yeah, you can smell it,
you can taste it.

- There'll be a lead content as well.
- Which is really poisonous.
- Yes.

OK, I'll give you that back.

EMMA LAUGHS

So maybe silver is a better option.

- OK.
- This is going into the 17th,
18th century.

- So, solid silver?
- Solid silver.

It's not exactly going to be

in your poor man's cupboard then,
is it?

No, so a lot more expensive.

You always know
if you're eating off a silver spoon.

- You can taste it on the food.
- Yeah.

The bad taste you get
when eating off pewter or silver

is due to the metal reacting
with acids in the food

and with our saliva.

But steel -

an alloy of iron,
carbon and other elements -

had the potential to react
in a different way.

By the mid-19th century,

Sheffield was producing
85% of British steel

for everything from knives
and forks to railway tracks.

But in 1913,
just before the First World War,

a revolution in cutlery production
came from a surprising source.

This gentleman, Harry Brearley,

was looking for different alloys

to make a gun barrel
that wouldn't rust.

So he doesn't set out to make
a better spoon,

this is a man
who wants to make a better gun?

Yes.

In search of a metal
that wouldn't rust or corrode,

Harry began to experiment

with steel alloys containing
chromium,

which has a high melting point,
ideal for use in gun barrels.

To find out more,

we're visiting the factory of
Sheffield cutlery makers David Mellor

to look at some of
Harry's experiments.

So we've got some early samples of
some of the tests

that Harry Brearley had been working
on with his gun barrels,

and then he discovers that,
actually,

this might be useful
for something else.

On the 13th of August, 1913,

Harry discovered a form of steel
that was not only rust-proof,

but had another revolutionary
property.

- So he discovers this rustless steel,
stainless steel...
- Stainless steel.

- A metal with no taste.
- Oh, really?

No, so if you imagine this
is the first time

that a metal hasn't really had
that aftertaste.

So out of rifle barrels
comes cutlery.

Yeah, definitely.

Originally known as rustless steel,

in 1921, Harry teamed up with
a local firm to produce cutlery

which they marketed
as stainless steel.

So this is a mass market product.

- It's cheap in comparison to
what went before.
- Yes.

Yeah, very much so.

And as it says on the box,

"Neither rusts,
tarnishes nor stains.

"Cutlery made from this steel
is unaffected by food acids

"and is in consequence
a universal boon."

A universal boon!

"Guaranteed."

And here at David Mellor,

they've been making
stainless-steel spoons

since the 1960s.

Today, David's son, Corin,
is the company's creative director.

So, what's so great about
stainless steel for spoons, then?

It's indestructible.
It's incredibly resilient.

Lasts forever.

And there is nothing really

to substitute good old
stainless steel.

I mean, it simply is the best
material to make a spoon out of.

100-odd years on,

it's just part of life.

Absolutely part of life.

It's there every morning
for your cereal, isn't it?

And you just use it.

Spot on, that, Ruth.

Back at the factory,

I'm making a cereal
fit for the best of spoons.

It's like The Beatles.

# What a beautiful day
Hey, hey

# I'm the king of all time... #

Bloody noisy.

# And nothing is impossible

- # In my all-powerful mind... #
- That's better.

What we've got so far
is nothing like flakes yet.

PADDY WHISTLES

So I'm in search of
head of operations, Ian Selley.

You all right, Ian?
How are you, pal? Are you all right?

- OK, thanks.
- Ian, I'll tell you,

everything in this factory
is supersized.

- Yeah, it's a really big plant.
Really big.
- Oh, my word, is it?

Now, I've just left Lizzie.

All that cereal's not quite cereal
yet. It's still very moist.

I believe you're the man
to dry it out.

I sure am, Paddy.

So we've been through
the cooking process.

Everything that we're going to see
in the next few stages

is about how
we're going to transform that

- into the crispy cereal
that we know.
- OK.

It starts with the granulator,

a fierce-looking bit of kit

which forces the mixture
through a mesh.

This, essentially, is a box now
with a steel conveyor inside.

- Right.
- And it will hold roughly
three cooks

at any one time,
which is about two tonnes of food.

My word.

And we're just trying
to break it up,

trying to make it more even,
more free-flowing,

- in order that we can take
moisture out.
- OK. Got it.

And off we go,

following the mix to a massive
30-metre-long dryer...

Keep going, Ian.

..where the temperature reaches
100 degrees Celsius.

As it travels along, the mix
loses a third of its moisture,

starting the transformation
from soggy to crunchy.

What have we got here, Ian?

- So these are our pellet mills,
Paddy.
- Right, yeah.

And what you can see there is
that's the cooked mix

coming down through that tube,

and we put it between two rollers
that are going to make

little tiny dough balls with it.

One of the metal rollers is covered
in hundreds of dimples.

It looks a bit like bubble wrap.

When the cooked cereal passes between
the rollers,

the mix is pushed up
into the dimples,

moulding it into little balls
of dough called pellets.

I can see the little balls
that are dropping, yeah.

- Behave, Ian.
- I know.

Each pellet will eventually
become one flake of cereal.

So they've still got a little bit
of moisture in them, yeah?

They still need to hold quite
a lot of moisture

in order that we can get them
to form together now

to make them little balls.

These little pellets don't look like
cereal flakes yet...

..but they look over the moon
to be on their way.

Oh-oh!
Look at these cheeky little scamps.

Having a right little bounce about.

# Bounce... #

So at this point now, we've put
the product through a mesh,

so those that have made it
into a pellet small enough

drop through that mesh.

# Bounce

# Bounce

# Bounce

# Bounce... #

Those that
don't make it through there...

So you can see there are some lumps

- that go over the top
and over the end.
- Yeah.

They return back into the process.

How much is coming through here now,
Ian?

So each pellet mill, Paddy, produces
about 48,000 pellets a minute.

Wow.

# Bounce... #

If we multiply that by the amount
of pellet mills we've got on -

that's ten - it'll equate to about
4,000 bowls of cereal a minute.

Mate, sometimes when
I'm doing this show,

people tell me facts and figures,
I can't get my head around it,

and that's one of them. I mean,

yeah,
just how's that even possible?

- A lot of cereal.
- It really is amazin...!

It really is amazing to see.

IAN CHUCKLES

# Bounce. #

Want to try one, Paddy?

- Absolutely.
- At this point?

Oh, still very moist.

Still very moist at this point.

You've got to put a lot
in your mouth to get

that cereal taste.

They're chewy,
but it's not unpleasant.

But it's definitely not what I know
that taste to be.

After 4.5 hours,
we're leaving the pellets behind,

and we've got 100m
to cover to get to the flake making.

And here we are.

- Ah-ah-ah-ah!
- OK, Paddy...
- That looks
a little bit more familiar now.

Go on, Ian.
Reveal the flakes.

ARCADE GAME BEEPING

It's like playing the tastiest
tuppenny nudger on the pier.

Ask your grandparents.

We've only gone
and won the flaky jackpot!

So, Paddy,
this is one of our flaking mills.

This is very similar to
a pellet mill - two steel rolls.

- Yeah.
- But without the dimples.

And as you can see there,
that becomes a flake.

- Would you like to take a sample?
- Yes, sir.

OK, pull the handle there
and we'll take a sample.

My God!

- That's floppy.
- There's still a lot
of moisture at this phase.
- Yeah.

I thought they were going to come out
totally solid and crispy.

So at this point we've taken out
about 40% moisture.

There's still moisture in there,

because if we dried it out
completely at this point,

we wouldn't be able
to get it through that flaking mill.

It would probably disintegrate into
a powder.

I don't know if
it's a psychological thing,

but because it's a bit more like
a flake,

I'm getting a flavour
of it more now.

- Possibly, yeah.
- Yeah.

But seeing those floppy flakes
makes me think of

one of my pet hates -

soggy bits of breakfast
stuck on the dishes.

It's the eternal debate -

what's the best way
to stack those dirty cereal bowls

in your dishwasher
and get them spotlessly clean?

Well, luckily for us,

Cherry Healey
is about to give us the answer.

And ever the professional,

she's brought her own prop along.

Looks heavy, that, Cherry.

In most households,

it would seem there is one person
who stacks the dishwasher

with the precision of
a Scandinavian architect,

and there is another who takes more
of a cram-it-in approach.

So I'm in Bristol to dish the dirt
on this dishwashing divide.

- Cutlery first.
- No, do the plates.
- No, plates.

- No, cutlery first.
- You are cutlery first.

You are plates first.

There's always an argument,
isn't there?

This is the wrong way.

This is wrong, because there should
be no pots up there.

Who is the stacker
and who is the shover?

I'm the stacker.

- Does he sometimes just shove
the dishes in?
- Occasionally,

and then I have to take it out
and redo it.

What do you think
about this stacking?

How does it make you feel?

- Untidy, I'd say.
- It looks like something I would do.

- That would drive me nuts.
- Right.

I would have to take it all out
and restack.

It seems there's only
one conclusion -

everyone thinks they're right.

SHE LAUGHS

Time to clear it up
once and for all.

Back in my very own kitchen,

my family's dirty breakfast bowls

are waiting
for some expert treatment...

- Hi, Andrew. I'm Cherry.
Nice to meet you.
- Hi, Cherry.

- Nice to meet you.
- Come in.

..from Andrew Laughlin,
dishwasher guru

and principal researcher
at consumer organisation Which?.

Is there anything that causes more
domestic arguments

than stacking the dishwasher?

I would say no.

They cause a lot of arguments,

but hopefully we can settle
a few arguments today.

But before Andrew gives me
a masterclass in stacking,

I need to rinse my very dirty plates.

- No. No, no, no, no, no, Cherry.
- Oh, what?

- Cherry, Cherry, Cherry...
- Oh, it's gross, though!

- We don't.
- You don't rinse?
- We don't rinse plates.

You can actually mess up how
the machine works by doing it,

because on most machines'
auto programme

it has what's called
a turbidity sensor.

- Now...
- A turbidity sensor?
- Yeah.

That senses, in that prewash cycle,
how cloudy the water is.

And what it's looking
for is how dirty your dishes are.

So imagine if you cleaned
all this stuff, put it all in,

the machine's going to go,
"Hold on a minute.

"This is just clean dishes.

"I'll adjust the temperature
and lower it accordingly."

So if you want your dishes
really clean,

make sure they're dirty?

The dishwasher wants to clean.
Let it.

Instead of rinsing,

scrape leftovers into
your food waste bin

and regularly clean
the dishwasher filter.

And when stacking,

face everything towards
the centre of the machine

for the best performance.

As a rule of thumb,
typically, if you eat out of it,

it goes on the lower rack.

- If you drink out of it,
it goes on the upper rack.
- Right.

And make sure no items are touching,

so the water can flow
and wash effectively.

Non-stick cookware, sharp knives
and wood

should never go
in the dishwasher,

as high temperatures
and water pressure

could damage them.

- Oh, my God, are you restacking?
- No...

It's like a natural thing.

Is it because some of them
weren't quite even?

Well, you know, I mean,
it is my job,

you know,
to be a slight...slight pedant.

Particular placement
might be important,

but with this next lot,
Andrew's got his work cut out.

These are two of
the worst offenders -

cereal-based anything
and scrambled eggs.

Yeah. What you've got here is carbs,
sugar and starch,

and protein with the egg,

so they take a bit more time
to break down.

When left behind, the starches
and proteins on the bowls

form bonds with each other
and start to harden.

The longer the food sits,
the more cement-like it becomes.

By adding moisture,
the dishwasher breaks these bonds.

So what we want to do with this one

is put it in the middle
where the intensity is highest.

I'll be stunned if that comes off.

We'll see.

Time to put Andrew's tips to
the test.

Right, in the tablet goes.

A prewash sprays jets
of cold water between

the carefully-spaced plates
and cutlery,

knocking off excess foods
before the main cycle begins.

But perfect stacking is not
the only thing required

for my dishes to sparkle.

What about tablets?
Is that important?

Absolutely, yeah.

They are designed to break down
all the dirt

and the food waste
and start the cleaning process.

Most tablets contain
enzymes which attack

protein-based foods
like my scrambled eggs,

as well as the starchy residue
of breakfast cereal.

They also have something else
in them,

which is a surfactant,
and it basically stops water

from forming droplets
and it makes it spread more easily.

We want our detergent
to have maximum coverage

and the water is the vehicle
to get that there.

Another addition, rinse aid,
disperses the water

on the surface of the dishes,

helping them to dry at the end of
the cycle.

And to run efficiently,

special dishwasher salt softens
the water,

preventing limescale build-up

and those horrid white marks
on glasses.

Which is so annoying.

Every household has a cloudy glass.

Yeah, that will be because
you've not kept up with your salt.

And with the cycle over,

it's time to see if
my impeccably-stacked dishwasher

has done its job.

No!

SHE GASPS

No! It dealt with the cereal.

- Dealt with the eggs.
- Even the egg.
- Even the egg.

- So the cutlery is sparkling.
- Yeah.

So does that mean
that stacking properly works?

Yep. Don't prewash,
stack properly the first time,

and you'll get good results
every time.

I'm sorry I didn't wear sunglasses,

because that
is some good-looking cutlery.

So we've learnt how to get the best
out of our dishwasher.

Now all that remains is the battle
of whose turn it is to empty it.

# We are giants... #

That's going to take a big
bottle of milk.

# We are giants
We are giants... #

Just like everything
in this factory,

we've now got supersized bowls
of cereal.

But these flakes are still missing
that all-important crunch,

so I'm on the hunt for Ian again.

# Do-do-do... #
Is it that way?

I'm not sure where I'm going

from here now.

PADDY CHUCKLES

I want to find out how flakes go
from floppy to fabulous.

There he is.

Good to see you again, Ian.

- How are you, pal?
- OK.
- I'll tell you what...

- ..it's toasty here.
- Oh, it's really warm.

The heat coming off that,
flippin' heck!

Phwoar!

IAN LAUGHS

We've arrived at
the toasting machine.

That explains a lot.

So this is the part
where we generate

- the really crispy, crunchy flake.
- OK.

So what you can see
at the point coming up the in-feed,

we've still got the floppy flakes.

- Yeah, I can see some hung over
the side there.
- Yeah.

- So there's still a significant
amount of moisture in there.
- Yeah.

And what they're going to do now,
they go into our toaster.

- Right.
- It's very similar to
a toasting machine

that you'd get in a hotel.

If you think about one

where you load the bread
on the conveyor...

I was going to say, you might be
wasting your money there.

Get a new machine.

Because I have never used
a hotel toaster

that toasts the bread.

It just comes out warm.

IAN CHUCKLES

- This is significantly different.
- This is proper? Right, OK.

What temperature's in there, Ian?

So this is way
in excess of 200 degrees.

Oh, my word. That's proper.

So we're now going to put these
floppy flakes inside the oven.

Inside there is a conveyor,
but it's a vibrating conveyor.

- Yeah.
- And it's bouncing the flake
up and down,

and we're going to really reduce
that moisture.

The bouncing helps
the evaporation process

and stops them sticking together.

Look at that.

I've got to say, they're definitely
a nicer colour now.

What you're seeing now
is 6.3 tonnes an hour here.

- Wow.
- So that's the equivalent
of about 12,500 boxes an hour.

It's bonkers, isn't it?

You know, it's amazing to me

the amount of stuff that's going out
of factories every single day.

The product, the ingredients,
the work.

- It's mind-blowing.
- Yeah.

I'm getting them
lovely aromas, Ian.

So what's happening within there

is something called
the Maillard reaction.

That's where you get
a browning effect

and it also really fetches out
the aromas and the flavours.

It was French chemist Louis Maillard
who discovered

that heating amino acids
and sugars

gives cooked food that taste
we love.

We're talking barbecued meat,

roasted coffee and, of course,
the toasty flavour of cereal.

So when I'm on the beach
in Tenerife,

on my sunlounger,
I'm getting the Maillard effect?

- Probably, yeah.
- Oh!

IAN CHUCKLES

Also, what's happened through
the toaster is we've enhanced

the surface texture of it.

You'll see where
the rice grain has expanded.

Yeah, and it's popped,
so the textures look much different.

And that's the wheat,
the kibbled barley, the rice,

all coming together now.

Now it'll be really crunchy.

What are we left, moisture-wise?

At this stage now,
we've taken out 90%,

- most of the moisture.
- Oh, right.

- Can I try one?
- You can.
- Or two.

- Extremely hot.
- My God, they're roasting!

I mean, you would be hot,
wouldn't you,

- if you've come out of an oven,
to be fair?
- Yeah.
- Blimey.

- Wow!
- Right.

Oh!

Lovely bit of crunch there now, Ian.
That's lovely.

I'm just not quite getting
the full flavour, Ian.

Just there's something missing there.

So that's because, Paddy,

we're going to add
a little bit more flavour in

- in the next phase...
- OK.
- ..which is our coating plant.

Lead on, Ian.

Tell you what, moreish, them.

Very nice.

# Shut the bedroom window
in the morning

# Go to the shop,
make plans to be leaving

# In the morning... #

The breakfast flakes
travel on through the vast factory,

up this spiral elevator,

which uses vibration alone
to jiggle them upwards...

# In the morning... #

..as they head towards the enormous
coating drum.

# Out of the dark and into the light

# When the morning comes,
I will be all right... #

Oh, my word,
they are absolutely flying in.

They're coming out of that tube
so quick

they don't even look like
flakes till they hit the drum.

This stage now, believe it or not,

- we actually put a little
bit of moisture back in.
- Right.

Only a very, very low level.

And so we're putting
a coating syrup on here,

so that contains sugar, salt, water,

and we put some vitamins
in at this point.

# Out of the dark and into the light

# When the morning comes,
I will be all right... #

Inside the drum,

the sugary liquid is sprayed
onto the flakes from above,

and the drum keeps moving them

so the syrup doesn't make them
all clump together.

Then after a trip
through yet another dryer,

my flakes emerge
looking good enough to eat...

..again.

There they are.

Now, straight away there, Ian,

I can see that
little bit of sheen on 'em.

So that's the coating,
or the flavour, that we've added.

- Yeah.
- But now they've been through
the dryer,

now that's a final product
in its final, finished state.

You know what I'm going
to ask, don't you?

- I do, Paddy.
- Get your scoop in there, Ian.

- Let me get you a sample, mate.
- Let's have a look.

Right. Here we go. Big moment.

Oh!

Instantly, I get that sweetness,
which is amazing,

because if I'd have had
that without trying it before,

I wouldn't have recognised that.

- Yeah.
- And at the end, when you swallow it,

it's still sort of there
in your mouth.

But, yeah, it makes
all the difference, that, doesn't it?

- We're really fetching the flavours
out now.
- Yeah.

This is exactly
what I recognise now.

This is what I pour out the box
into the bowl,

splash of milk, job's a good 'un.

So now they're ready to go off
to packing.

Which is where I'm heading, Ian.

Me and you will have to say goodbye.

I have absolutely loved having
our all-day breakfast together.

Put the handshake away.

- Come on. Thanks for looking
after me today.
- Thanks, Paddy.

- Take care, pal.
- Take care.

Of course, this lot would be nothing
without one thing...

COW MOOS

..milk.

Which brings us to Ruth,
who's down on the farm.

For centuries,
our countryside has been blessed

with miles of rolling pasture land
and grazing cows.

But much like today,

the history of dairy farming
has been a troubled one,

as farmers battle the challenges

of wavering demand
and falling prices for their milk.

Back in the 1930s,

there was an organisation
that set out

to give farmers a better deal.

And one of their aims was to get
the British public

to fall back in love with drinking
a lot more milk.

All right with you, girls?

- Hello!
- Hi.

Historian Amy Swainston knows a thing
or two about the milk industry.

They do look happy.

THEY CHUCKLE

Just been fed.

I'm meeting her at this dairy farm
in Dorset

to find out why farmers needed help
a hundred years ago.

So what was going on
for dairy farmers in the 1920s, then?

Well, in the late 1800s,

many farmers had turned to dairy
as a way to make money,

because it was seen
as quite a stable product to sell.

But by the 1920s,

milk production far exceeded
the demand for milk.

- So essentially there was a surplus?
- Exactly.

Just not enough people buying
what they were making.

As supply outstripped demand,

most dairy farmers were struggling
to get a fair deal for their milk.

Farms were a lot smaller back then.

You'd have about 14 cows in a herd,
whereas today it's about 200 to 300.

They would sell their milk to
the creameries,

which were a lot bigger.

- So all these little tiny farmers have
got to deal with this middleman.
- Yes.

Yeah, and it's the creameries

that would dictate the prices to
the farmers.

Across the country,

creameries processed the milk,

and made butter and cheese.

To fight their control over
the market,

the farmers decided
to band together.

The decision was taken

in 1933 to set up
a cooperative between farmers,

to help them to sell their milk
at a reasonable price to buyers.

They called themselves
the Milk Marketing Board,

and they were a cooperative
that was run by farmers for farmers.

- So that instead of the power
being with these middlemen...
- Yeah.

- ..the power should actually sit with
the producers, the farmers.
- Yeah.

So that they could get a fair price.

Farmers no longer had to accept

the prices offered by
the creameries.

Instead,

each month the board set the price
for the milk they supplied...

Hello!

..and paid the money straight back to
the farms.

Ahh, we're in the heart of
the action now!

RUTH LAUGHS

It ensured 70,000 farmers across
the UK

could maintain a steady income.

And as well as negotiating
a fair deal for farmers...

There we go.

..the board was also responsible
for popularising dairy products.

Over the following decades,
their marketing team got busy,

making milk not just
a favourite of children,

but a drink
that appealed to adults too.

So here we've got a milk bar.

RUTH LAUGHS

The Milk Marketing Board
opened up quite a few milk bars

throughout the country,

and you can see the photos
of trying to persuade young women

this is a trendy thing to do.

It's particularly young women,
isn't it?

Beautifully dressed.

And they didn't stop there.

In 1958,

they sponsored
the Tour of Britain cycle race,

renaming it the Milk Race.

Oh, and we've got footballers here
as well.

Footballers, yeah.

- Really associating it with physical
fitness, with youth, vitality.
- Yeah.

And there were advertising campaigns
that came along with this,

so they were
spending about 1.7 million

- on marketing per year by
the mid '60s...
- Wow.

..which is about 30 million today.

The investment paid off.

Throughout the '60s and '70s,

the British public
fell in love with milk.

And by the early 1980s,

as football's League Cup
was rebranded the Milk Cup,

annual sales of
the white stuff peaked

at nearly 13 billion litres,

compared to 4 billion in the 1930s.

But it didn't last.

So there is no Milk Marketing Board
any more.

- What happened?
- Well, in 1994,

the MMB's actually shut down
for good by the Government,

and that's because
the Milk Marketing Board

- has a monopoly over
the dairy industry.
- Ahh, yeah.

The Government wanted
to increase competition,

but with the break-up
of the Milk Marketing Board,

the farmers lost their power to set
the best price.

So from the mid '90s,
dairy farmers are on their own.

Yeah. So where before they'd had
that assurance on prices,

now there wasn't any.

With retailers driving prices down

and the costs
of farming going up,

many dairy farms couldn't survive.

So today we actually
have around 10,000 dairy farms left,

which is the lowest it's been
in living memory.

And now supermarkets are
the main seller of milk, so...

- Yeah, so all the power is with them.
- Yeah.

The Milk Marketing Board
had its detractors.

But for 60 years,

it provided stability
in an unstable industry.

It was a sort of organisation
of a different era, wasn't it?

Quite revolutionary at its time.

Yeah, in many ways it seems

that we need something
similar today.

Oh, send a bottle of milk
my way, Ruth.

I've got a lot of flakes
to get through here.

# In the morning, you know you won't
remember a thing... #

But you can't have breakfast cereal
without a box to put it in.

First,

exactly 440g of cereal is weighed
and dropped into a bag.

They're sealed
and fall onto a vibrating conveyor

that shakes the contents flat.

# In the morning, you know
it's gonna be all... #

I'm meeting project lead
Donna Jenkins

to find out more about how
the bags get into the boxes.

- Hi, Paddy.
- How are you?
Nice to meet you.

- You OK?
- Yeah. Welcome to packing.
- So talk me through it.

What's happening now?

So we loaded the boxes
onto the cart there,

and it's got a conveyor mechanism,

and they work their way
up the conveyor here.

So each of those flat boxes are
pulled down by the suction cups.

- As you can see, the suction cups
extracted them.
- Yeah.

They work their way into the guides

and the front box
is being pushed open.

- Really clever.
- Yeah, it is clever.
- Yeah.

Amazing. Someone has sat down
and invented a machine

that takes a flat box
and flips it up.

Someone's sat down and thought
about that, that's bonkers.

We'll work our way down.
So what's happening now...

TANNOY ANNOUNCEMENT

Hold on. Don't worry.

I know how
to handle these situations.

- Yeah.
- You're going to be impressed
by this.

Shut it!

SHE LAUGHS

- That's how you do it.
- And then resume.

THEY LAUGH

So we apply glue to the top
and the bottom of the box.

- Right.
- We have
what we call a pusher.

It's getting the food,

it's pushing the food into
the open box.

- Ah, I can see it, yeah.
- It's pushing it, yeah.
- I can see it.

Then it makes its way along
the conveyor.

It's now going to seal
the boxes shut.

- So clever.
- It is.

# Gonna use my arms,
gonna use my legs

# Gonna use my style,
gonna use my sidestep

# Gonna use my fingers... #

The machine turns out 150 boxes
a minute.

That's more than two a second.

So what I've always wanted
to know is,

what's the K for on Special K?

Come on, Paddy.

Kellogg's!

- # I'm special
- Special

- # So special
- Special

# I gotta have some... #

Don't film me.
I'm... I'm embarrassed.

# Give it to me... #

Come on. Don't pretend you knew
that as well.

Moving on, me and Donna are leaving
packing and heading to distribution.

And, you've guessed it,
it's mega-sized.

This is like having a little stroll
in the old breakfast cereal future.

And I can see
what looked like a load of dodgems,

but with no drivers.

How many of these little rascals
are here?

Hey! Get out!

DONNA LAUGHS

So we have 25 of these.

They're called automated
guided vehicles, Paddy.

They just operate themselves.

And what their job is,

is to actually take all
the finished boxes

either into storage on site,
or they load it onto the auto bay

and it'll get fed onto a truck
all by itself.

Are you not worried about being taken
out by one of these?

- They're everywhere!
- No, Paddy,
they're actually really intelligent.

If you look at the top,
it's got a scanner.

- Yeah.
- So what that's doing is talking to

a control system which is
in the heart of the warehouse here.

- Oh, right. OK.
- They're actually that clever,

it'll actually detect obstacles
in front of them and it'll stop.

- Shall we give it a go?
- Let's give it a go. Yeah.

What have we got here?

Is this a specialist
robotic stoperator machine?

- No, bog-standard blue carton.
- It's a blue box.

All right. As good as any.

Right, I'll give it a whirl.
Here we go.

So if you pop it on the floor there.

Let's see.

Oh!

Doesn't right bump it.
We like that.

- Yeah, it'll now detect
if it's safe...
- Right.

- ..and then it'll start off again.
- Brilliant.

Amazing.
Very, very clever little things.

- Does it have to be a blue box?
- No.

- It can be any object?
- It could be you, Paddy.
- Wow.

Here we are.

Halt! Oh!

- That...
- Close.

That was that. Look at that!

Look how close that were.

But, to be fair, I jumped out
in front of it.

- I took it by surprise.
- Yeah, yeah.
You did, yeah.

It was just going about its everyday
microchip business then and then...

- ..I jumped in there.
- And it
still kept you safe.
- Thank you.

VEHICLE BEEPS

Off you go.

Very clever.

# Way too fast

# Don't slow down,
you're gonna crash

# You should watch

# Watch your step

# Don't look out,
gonna break your neck

# So shut, shut your mouth

# Cos I'm not listening anyhow... #

Amazing!

That's fantastic.
Go on, you little rascals.

I love that.

Oh, I could hang about here all day,

but apparently we haven't
finished filming yet.

Don't worry about stopping
in front of the camera, lads.

Just mow them straight over.

Seven hours
after the delivery of rice,

my boxes of cereal
are about to leave the factory.

Well, there they all are, Donna.

You've got around about 19,000
finished boxes on there, Paddy.

- 19,000 boxes?
- 19,000.

A lot of cereal.

And every day,
40 trucks leave the factory,

so we'd best get this one
loaded up and on its way.

There they go.

Families across the nation
will be enjoying them very soon.

All this talk of breakfast
and cereals,

you know what I'm in the mood for?

Full English breakfast.

Good girl. Come on, Donna.

From the factory in Wrexham,

cereal is sent to all corners of
the country

to fill the bowls
of hungry souls the nation over.

And 30 million boxes are exported
from here right across Europe.

Bon appetit.

So there you go.

We finally got boxes

of crunchy flakes without
a drop of moisture in sight.

Well, not until they get
in your breakfast bowl.

Right,

get me some milk.

# Shut the bedroom window
in the morning

# Go to the shop,
make plans to be leaving

# In the morning

# Thought I was sleeping,
it was just a dream

# An alley cat chewing on
dead leaves

# In the morning. #