The Canning Factory

My post in January, with the story of Donny and Josie at the canning factory (see Night Cleaner), set me thinking more about how the factory worked, and what the job involved.  

The place was terrifying: the heat, the humidity, the confusion, a Bosch hellscape where lads in vests, high on towering gantries, watched over enormous tanks of peas, and girls in dust coats and elasticated head coverings hunched over conveyors of moving strawberries. Women with huge arm muscles used belts to pick up twenty or more full cans at a time, to load and unload heavy tubs, which other lads strained to wheel across the factory floor. Empty cans clattered noisily along overhead rails, and everywhere there was noise, heat and steam. You could not escape the overpowering smell of hot brine and crushed strawberries.

But I knew from friends you could earn very good money there, especially cleaning the machinery on the night shift.

Around forty students sat in the factory canteen while the manager allocated jobs. He dealt first with those who had worked there previously and then turned to the rest of us. “I still need three for the sugar room,” he said, “two for the canning loft, six packers, four in the stores, six outside in the yard ...” People raised their hands eager to volunteer but I kept mine down. Numbers dwindled as groups were sent on their way until there were just five of us left. “… and three night cleaners,” the manager finally said and we all raised our hands. He drew lots. I was second out. The last two weren’t needed straight away, and had to wait for others to drop out, which did not take long.

I searched for images to remind me how the factory worked. As cleaners we had to know how to operate it all. The following describes pea processing.

Lorry loads of peagrain (shelled peas) arrived in the yard to be weighed and tested by tenderometer (I only know I like the word and that a reading of 98 was good and over 100 was bad). The peas then passed through a series of noisy cleaning machines that used air, vibration and water to remove any remaining chaff, pods, sticks and stones. Bucket conveyors then took the peas inside the factory to water-filled hopper tanks which fed the blanchers.

Blanchers were huge rotating horizontal drums which heated the peas to 95 degrees and then abruptly cooled them to halt the cooking process. The peas then travelled along flat conveyors where broken bits and any remaining impurities such as poppy heads were removed by hand, and then up into another hopper to be mixed with brine ready for canning.

The canning machines were known as 'seamers'. They were fed by empty cans which clattered across the factory ceiling from the canning loft, to be filled at a rate of two or three per second, and sealed with lids. The full cans were then loaded into tubs and hoisted into the autoclaves (pressure cookers). After cooking, they were lifted out and left to cool before being moved to the labelling and packing area. 

Images do not capture what seemed, until you made sense of it, the movement and energy, smell, noise, chaos and confusion. Or the mess, which our job was to clean up.

To clean it, we had to operate all the machines; every one. We went in at six in the evening and helped out with production until everyone else went home. At around nine or ten, we were left on our own.

We were up and down ladders with hosepipes flushing the hoppers, and running the bucket elevators, belt conveyors and seamers to blast off dregs and detritus. It was impossible to avoid getting soaked every night, but within a week you were super fit. The worst thing was chapped red rings around your legs under the tops of your wellington boots. You needed lots of Sudocrem.

You would not believe the number of corners, pockets and ledges where peas and strawberries could hide. They all had to be washed away. If any remained next day they could get into the cans and begin to ferment. After a few weeks, the sides would bulge and split. They loved that in the stores. It was a great trick to throw a bulging can just behind some unsuspecting victim, where it would explode like a hand grenade, spraying a rancid mess of decomposing contents.

The most dangerous machines were the seamers: powerful rotating cylinders which filled and sealed the cans. They quickly became covered with a sticky film of squashed peas or strawberries. You had to run them without safety guards to blast them clean. I once caught a hosepipe inside and it was instantly twisted round and shredded. It would have done the same to your arm. No one ever said much about health and safety.

We even played with them. By running a single can through at a time, you could seal a pound note inside a small can, then seal that inside a larger can, and so on, until you had three or four like Chinese dolls with a pound note in the middle. The finishing touch was to paste a vegetable label on the outside: the perfect gift!

Lastly we cleared the floor, rounding up flocks of peas with our hosepipes and shovelling them up for waste. We finished by flushing the floor and drains with sodium hypochlorite: not too much, we didn’t want to be told off for killing the bugs at the sewage works again.

Waste strawberries, however, did not go to waste, even if they had been on the floor. We shovelled them into barrels for the jam factory. It was enough to put you off strawberry jam for life.

After that there was just the outside yard to do. That needed daylight. We waited by sleeping in the ladies' toilets, which were clean and comfortable with carpeted benches. In no way would you want to sleep in the men's toilets.

Sometimes there would be boxes of strawberries waiting in the yard. Sweet, fragrant, firm and juicy, they were just too tempting to resist: an early breakfast so long as you evened out the contents to look untouched, and did not eat more than your constitution could handle.

The last week I was there, students were the only labour. The 'regulars' had been made redundant and the factory was to close. On my last night, I cleaned the whole place on my own, alone in the factory.

Outside was a hopper full of peas ready for the last day’s production. I knew they would be starting at six, and that there were no longer any early morning staff to start things up in readiness. So I used initiative. I started the cleaning machines in the yard, and peas began to flow into the hopper tanks inside the factory. I started the blancher to heat up to its operating temperature. When the factory managers arrived they seemed to assume someone must have been instructed to do all this. I didn’t mention that, but for me, the whole factory would have been idle for an hour. I simply clocked off and went home feeling very satisfied.