Visit to Universal Beverages Ltd, Ledbury
13/11/2013
By 2013 Bob Tabor
Bob was delighted to visit the Universal Beverages Limited facility in Ledbury on Friday 8th November where he saw the Bulmers Apple Harvest being processed. Bob was given a fascinating tour of the whole facility and saw the complete production from the arrival of the apples to the final bottling of the cider. He was greeted on arrival by Barry Mills, the Brewery Manager of UBL in Ledbury and then shown around by the Mill Manager Bob Hall.
The site was taken over by Heineken UK in 2009 and is now a large-scale fruit milling and beverage production and packaging facility. Following substantial investment by Heineken in state-of-the-art equipment and facilities, UBL is now one of the largest milling and production sites in Europe capable of processing over 15,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables per week, producing alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages.
Heineken are very conscious of their ecological responsibilities and the site at UBL only produces 1.5% of waste in total. Water is recycled and fruit and vegetable by-products are shipped to a nearby biomass production facility.
Barry Mills also explained to Bob the high safety record held by the facility – no accidents had occurred in over 360 days at that stage!
