Ever since I was little – albeit I am only 22 – I have been on a journey to find the greatest chocolate milk.
By happenstance, the 300mm of God’s nectar caught my eye when I visited Harris Farm markets a week ago.
Stumbling across your chocolate milk has not only dumbfounded me in my quest to find the world’s greatest chocolate milk but has also destroyed my diet.
I am on my 12th bottle in 7 days. So why I am writing to you, First of all, I would like to say thank you, secondly could you please make it in one litre bottles.
Please never stop making this crack milk!
Regards Isaac It is the little things like these messages I get that make this journey into processing worthwhile.
To get this factory up to an efficient level of scale where it becomes self sustaining and not just a hobby that is slowly sending me broke, we need an investment of $250-$500k. Luckily for us,the amount in our Bethune Lane Dairy account, the balance floats between not being able to pay our bills and $5000, so we can cover it easily. So we are going to beg, borrow, steal (sshhh!!) anything we can to make a production line for next to nothing.
Stage 1 – An old fashioned American Cherry Burrell milk bottle filler fell off the back of a truck near my farm this week (miracles do happen – you could not buy this machine today or an equivalent for under $100k), I am constantly amazed at how generous people can be in giving a helping hand to people on the bottom rungs of the ladder.
It has been installed in the workshop at present as it has not been used for a while. We are going to mark out the walls of the factory on the floor in the workshop to work out how we can use our existing space to make a functional production line complete with conveyers, bottle labeller, date coding machine, and of course the new bottle filler and capper.
Currently I would guess we are bottling four or five two-litre bottles per minute (yes, I know that is embarrassing but it is a beginning), this bottle filler is capable of doing from a low of 20 bottles per minute up to 60 bottles per minute. The minimum speed is four times faster than what we are currently doing. It should also reduce wastage as with hand filling, it is hard to avoid spillage and currently all the bottles are washed after filling which wets the carboard boxes they go in and makes them saggy.
The limitation I can see is that I think it will fill the glass chocolate milk bottles but because the lids are a steel twist cap, modifications will be needed or a separate capper required for the chocolate milk bottle lids.
Luckily, parts are available, it’s American-made, which used to mean great build quality, it weighs over a tonne. The most likely outcome is we will fluff around for a couple of months getting it operational and ready to move in. It will need to go in a safety cage or trip wire as when running, there are lots of moving parts and potential pinch points. But stage one of building a production line for next to nothing is complete – bottle filler acquired.
So Isaac, I suspect we probably won’t make one litre bottles but we are on the way to destroying to diet of many more unsuspecting Australians, good lucking with resisting.
My suggestion is to dance a jig, to keep the weight off – it’s good exercise and crack fun!
