World's Top 5 S01E06
World's Top 5 S01E06
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00Factories, some of the biggest and most amazing buildings on earth, where science and technology
00:10combine to produce everything from a silicon chip to a rocket ship.
00:17Factories come in countless forms, super-slick, super-modern, super-sized, each in their own
00:24way a complex mega-machine.
00:27But what makes the very top world beater?
00:30We put these mechanical marvels under the spotlight.
00:34Which factory is the largest?
00:35It's a human body.
00:37It's a big, giant human body.
00:40Produces the most.
00:41There is no other system or no other place delivering so many cars to customers.
00:47Costs the most to build.
00:48All three engines up and burning and liftoff.
00:53In our search for the ultimate giants of engineering genius, we go on a global search.
01:00Testing, analysing, rating to establish the best of the best.
01:05The world's ultimate mega-factory.
01:13From all those formidable factories across all four corners of the earth.
01:18There are over 7 million different factories on earth, producing pretty much everything
01:22imaginable.
01:23How do you pick the best one?
01:27We've shortlisted five of the world's best mega-factories for scrutiny.
01:34The Kennedy Space Centre, where space streams were built.
01:39From India, the world's largest oil refinery.
01:44German efficiency in overdrive, the Volkswagen car plant.
01:50The world's largest steelworks in South Korea.
01:54Home to a billion baked beans, Europe's largest food processing plant.
02:01Five industrial fortresses, each of them in their own way, world beaters.
02:08Judging their performance across five key tests, for the first time, we reveal the world's
02:14ultimate factory.
02:17It's just incredible, just amazing science.
02:20First category up, let's throw the spotlight on size.
02:25From our selection of factory giants, which can boast the single largest building?
02:33Starting us off in fifth place, India's oil king.
02:37This is the Reliance oil refinery in Jamnagar.
02:41It sprawls over 30 square kilometres, and its biggest single construction is a 145,000
02:49cubic metre storage tank.
02:52But in this spaghetti-fest of steel, you'd be pushed to identify exactly where components
02:57start or end.
02:59There'd be enough metalwork to make the equivalent of 19 Eiffel Towers, and enough concrete to
03:05make 10 Empire State Buildings.
03:09Sitting at number four, the POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks in South Korea, where the largest
03:15building is the cold rolling mill at 331,000 cubic metres.
03:21But it is just one of several huge buildings in this linear mega factory.
03:27Each process has its own building in line, and once the steel's completed each step in
03:31the casting and rolling process, it gets moved straight on to the next building without any
03:36delay.
03:38At three, the home of the humble baked bean, the Kitt Green food plant in Wigan, England.
03:45At 667,000 cubic metres, the enormity of this factory is in stark contrast to the tiny product
03:53that ends up on our plates.
03:55In order to pack nearly two million cases of canned food, the factory has these 11 high
04:00bay cranes built right into the roof of the factory.
04:04Moving in at number two, the Volkswagen car factory at Wolfsburg in Germany.
04:10This mother of all car plants can produce more than three quarters of a million vehicles
04:15a year.
04:16The largest single structure here is final assembly building 54, at 1.2 million cubic
04:23metres.
04:27German efficiency at its best.
04:30Coming into first place is the mind-bogglingly huge vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy
04:36Space Centre in Florida.
04:39Adapted to work on every single US space mission since the 60s, the VAB, as they call it, is
04:45the tallest single storey building in the world.
04:48In fact, if it was a normal building, it would be 50 floors high.
04:58The VAB building is so big, the Statue of Liberty could actually fit inside, and she
05:03could also have a few of her friends if she had them as well.
05:06So, the Kennedy Space Centre wins the first test.
05:10Let's slide open those massive doors and breathe in some space history.
05:17Today, the last of the space shuttles to be built, Endeavour, is about to leave NASA's
05:26gigantic vehicle assembly building, the VAB, for the final time.
05:33Having flown 25 space missions, Endeavour is being retired to the California Space Museum.
05:41But first, it needs some essential maintenance from engineer Bart Panulo and the rest of
05:46his shuttle moving team.
05:48You'll notice that the back of the orbiter looks a little skinny, and the front has the
05:53hood missing, so to speak, which means that the hazardous quantities have all been removed.
05:59They've been decontaminated.
06:01Go for main engine start.
06:03All three engines up and burning, and lift off.
06:09The US shuttle program may have been shut down in 2011, but neither it nor any previous
06:15space mission since the 60s would have existed without the VAB, one of the largest and most
06:21technologically advanced factories in the world.
06:29Construction of the giant VAB kicked off in the early 60s.
06:33To help it withstand tropical storms, its foundations were super strengthened by over
06:384,000 sand-filled steel pilings driven 50 meters into the limestone bedrock.
06:47But in 1965, the VAB finally opened for business.
06:52Its first key task was the assembly of the Saturn V, the tallest, heaviest and most powerful
06:58rocket ever.
07:03It propelled man to the moon for the very first time on Apollo 11.
07:08The angle has landed.
07:16By the mid-80s, NASA's space shuttle program was well underway, and the VAB once again
07:22played a key role.
07:27Conrad Nagel has been an engineer at NASA since the 1960s.
07:32It was his job to modify the internal structure of the VAB for the space shuttle after the
07:38Apollo program ended in 1972.
07:42At the heart of the VAB, seven huge platforms, each at different levels, can be extended
07:48or retracted to allow engineers access to the rockets.
07:52They were used on Saturn V rockets and the space shuttles, but will soon be replaced
07:57with more modern structures.
08:00Over the years, we actually ended up modifying a lot of the platforms to provide better access.
08:07We added additional elements that allowed us to get closer to the vehicle.
08:15Also essential for accessing every part of the enormous rockets were the building's five
08:20enormous high-lift bridge cranes.
08:24Tony Sabatino is a specialist bridge crane operator who worked on the shuttle program.
08:29These are some of the controls.
08:30This is the main hoist joist.
08:32This here is a selector switch, and it has a fine speed, a coarse speed, and a high speed.
08:38Even at high speed, it still takes 45 minutes for an empty hook to reach the ground, 160
08:46meters below.
08:47But once there, each crane has the ability to move up to 295 tons to within a millimeter.
08:55In the beginning, I would say absolutely, you know, you're really nervous when you're
08:59first learning.
09:00But as time goes, you don't really look at it as how much it costs or anything like that.
09:09As it gets ready to leave on its well-earned retirement mission, Endeavour is dwarfed by
09:14the VAB's giant doors.
09:17At 139 meters high, they're quite simply the biggest in the world.
09:24The doors are lifted up in a sequence, so the first one comes up, the next one comes
09:29up, and when they get to the top, they're all kind of stacked together.
09:33And when they're open, of course, it opens up to the whole world out as you roll the
09:37vehicle out to the launch pad.
09:41Despite the mothballing of the shuttle program, none of the VAB's multi-million pound hardware
09:46will be scrapped.
09:49Engineers are now gearing up for NASA's next generation space launch system, SLS, designed
09:55to send astronauts further into space than ever before.
10:01Bart and the shuttle moving team have finished preparing Endeavour for her final mission,
10:06and the world's media has gathered to record her final journey.
10:11But with the American space ambitions moving up a gear, this certainly won't be the last
10:16mission for the VAB.
10:18I absolutely love NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building.
10:22It's phenomenal.
10:23And what I love is they were going to build the biggest rocket ever, the Saturn V.
10:26And I went, oh, where should we get it built?
10:28Oh, nowhere.
10:29No, that's OK.
10:30We'll build it ourselves, and we'll build the world's biggest single-storey factory
10:34to do it.
10:35It's just amazing.
10:44Coming up, big buildings means big bucks.
10:48So which of our five megafactories cost the most?
10:59Five phenomenal megafactories, but which is the world's best?
11:04Hitting these awesome industrial icons against each other in five key categories will reveal
11:10the ultimate winner.
11:15NASA's colossal Kennedy Space Center in Florida is currently ahead with the world's largest
11:19single-factory building.
11:22But now we're shifting orbit as we throw the spotlight onto cold, hard cash.
11:28How much did it cost to create these prolific palaces of production?
11:34Initial investment.
11:38It may have cost a whopping $31 million, but it's still the least expensive of our five
11:44factories, the Kit Green food plant in northern England.
11:49It's actually made up of five factories in one, producing 1.34 billion cans every year
11:56of beans, baby food, pasta, soups, and puddings.
12:03Moving up a gear, it cost almost 39 times as much to build the mega car plant in Wolfsburg.
12:10The $1.27 billion price tag only steers it to fourth place.
12:17We're accelerating into stratospheric levels of cash now.
12:21It cost an astronomical $1.5 billion to construct America's first purpose-built space exploration
12:29center.
12:30When they were building the vehicle assembly building, they had to clear about two and
12:34a half square kilometers of land just for the one factory.
12:37And to do that, over a million cubic meters of dirt had to be shifted.
12:44Now multiply that by four, because to build the Reliance refinery, money was literally
12:50pumping like oil, $6 billion of it, as they even took on Mother Nature herself.
12:59So imagine the project brief.
13:00Boys, you've got three years to build this.
13:02I'm bringing in 75,000 people as they did.
13:05They all worked round the clock.
13:06They achieved it, even though they got hit by a cyclone.
13:11But at number one, the POSCO Gwangyang Steelworks in South Korea, the largest steel factory
13:18ever, costing a cool $18 billion to build.
13:23It's quite simply the most expensive factory in the world.
13:29Awesome.
13:30So steel yourself for a tour around this Korean tour de force.
13:40On the edge of South Korea's Bagan Mountains.
13:52This mega steelworks supplies gargantuan amounts of top-grade steel for the car and shipbuilding
13:58industries.
14:02At its heart, five blast furnaces, 120 meters high and 40 meters wide.
14:10But the real monster of the bunch is blast furnace number four.
14:15Line manager Ji-Yong Choi must ensure his furnace produces enough steel today to make
14:2014,500 cars.
14:23He has just eight hours.
14:26This blast furnace produces over five million tons of hot metal per year.
14:32So it's a unique blast furnace.
14:34So our people are proud of it.
14:42The steel giant is the world's number one.
14:46But that's still not enough.
14:48Within seven years, they plan to increase production by 25%.
14:54But at this factory, they're used to achieving the extraordinary, with every aspect of steel
15:00production happening on this one site.
15:06Close your eye and think how big this plant automatically produces every day, 365 days
15:13a year.
15:14So it's learning, learning.
15:15I think it's a human body.
15:18It's a big, giant human body.
15:22Like a human body, it needs feeding.
15:25And this steelworks has an insatiable appetite, particularly for iron ore and coal, which
15:31are imported in vast quantities into Posco's own port before being consumed by the steel
15:37making process.
15:42Refined iron ore is poured into blast furnaces and superheated to 1,250 degrees Celsius.
15:49Coal and limestone are added, which helps remove impurities.
15:54Under such elevated temperatures, the ore breaks down and forms steel.
15:59It's still mostly iron, but also has a small amount of carbon, which varies depending on
16:04the kind of steel required.
16:07And the whole process is controlled from here.
16:11We cannot look inside the blast furnace.
16:14So this control room is the headquarters to control and optimize the blast furnace.
16:20So it's a very important place.
16:23The steel industry is one of the most dangerous in the world, and blast furnaces are regarded
16:29as high-risk areas.
16:32In the past, steelworkers had to manually test the temperature of molten metal, a highly
16:37dangerous job that put them at severe risk.
16:41So the world's most advanced steel factory installed this, Liquirob, the robotic arm
16:54that has no problem withstanding extreme temperatures, vastly reducing the risk to humans.
17:01This factory was the first to introduce the German-designed robot.
17:06It has a unique 3D positioning sensor, allowing it to add purifying chemicals safely and with
17:12absolute precision.
17:14Three years ago, when Liquirob was introduced to our factory, Liquirob was the one to do
17:21all the work for us.
17:23Now it's automated, and Liquirob does all the automatic work.
17:33The factory constantly casts purified steel into huge slabs that are sent directly to
17:38one of ten rolling plants.
17:42Every 80 seconds, a 15-metre hunk of metal emerges from the ovens.
17:47In just 15 minutes, it's hot-rolled into a kilometre-long coil of thin steel for making
17:52car parts.
17:54Back at number four, the world's most productive blast furnace may not keep that title for
17:59long, because plans are in place for an even bigger one.
18:04But for today, Jiung Choi has achieved his output target of 14,500 tonnes.
18:19Five monstrously huge and expensive megabeasts, but to maximise all that power, you need people.
18:27Coming up, we throw the focus on the workers, man and megafactory working in perfect harmony.
18:35Five world-beating, ginormous megafactories assessed on their key attributes.
18:49The sky-high Kennedy Space Centre, the world's largest oil refinery, the ultra-robotic mother
18:56of all car plants, the world's biggest steelworks, and Europe's largest food processing plant.
19:05Each is put to the test and rated in five key categories.
19:13Currently sitting in pole position after the first two tests, the Kennedy Space Centre
19:18in Florida.
19:20Let's throw the spotlight now on employees. How many people does it take to power these
19:26megabeasts?
19:33In fifth place, the Kit Green food factory in northern England. Producing 200,000 tonnes
19:40of baked beans alone every year, the $31 million plant is packed with technology, even using
19:46lasers to scan the beans. But all that automation means it only needs 1,350 workers.
19:54The only stage where just humans are involved is the taste testing stage. Surely no robot
20:00could ever do that.
20:03At number four, NASA's Kennedy Space Centre is an epicentre of mental muscle. There are
20:10only 2,100 employees here, but most of them are highly specialised in their field.
20:19Korea's Mammoth Steelworks rolls into third place. This fully automated steel mill runs
20:2724-7, with as few as 750 employees on any single shift. Nevertheless, it needs 6,137
20:38employees altogether to keep the metal moving.
20:42They are printing money at POSCO. They're making almost double the amount per tonne
20:47on steelworks compared to any other steelwork factory in the world, and that is because
20:52they're so efficient.
20:55In at two, Reliant, with more than 15,000 employees. The oil refinery is also super-automated,
21:04though staff numbers are high enough to justify having their own town, with a school, bank,
21:09supermarkets and golf course.
21:12Most of the processes in the factory are completely automated, and each facility only has two
21:16people on average to monitor them at any time. I mean, that's quite phenomenal when you look
21:21at the size of this thing and how much is going on in there.
21:26But parking in the top slot, Europe's largest car plant. Here, hundreds of robots rub shoulders
21:33with a gargantuan human workforce of 51,500. 42% of the entire German town where it's based.
21:44Wolfsburg used to be a sleepy little town of only 1,000 inhabitants, but since the factory
21:49opened, it's boomed to 120,000.
21:53Time to strap ourselves in for a ride through one of the most imposing production lines
21:58on planet Earth.
22:04This immense factory in Wolfsburg, northern Germany, is home to Europe's largest car manufacturer.
22:12Covering almost seven square kilometres, it's an industrial metropolis of epic proportions,
22:20and one of the most technologically advanced car plants on Earth.
22:25The manufacturers are so proud of it, they've put their production processes on display,
22:31creating this separate showcase in Dresden, called the Transparent Factory.
22:39It allows us to get up close and personal to one of the most impressive production processes
22:44on Earth.
22:47Today's mission, produce another 4,500 cars. First off, the components have to get to the
22:54factory, 12,000 of them for every vehicle.
22:58Transporting this volume of parts into a city centre location could have been a logistical
23:04nightmare, so the factory is cunningly linked into Dresden's tram system with the CargoTram.
23:11CargoTram travels seven times a day through downtown Dresden to the logistics centre,
23:18and it carries 80% of the needed parts, except the raw bodies, which are too wide for CargoTram.
23:26Once at the factory, the vast number of components need distributing along a 1.5 kilometre assembly line.
23:35The solution? Perfectly choreographed robots, all operating in total silence.
23:4457 computer-controlled sleds are directed around the factory by 100,000 magnets hidden
23:52in the floor, which act like a roadmap, allowing the sleds to go anywhere along the production
23:58line, even in the lifts.
24:01What we have over here now is the guts of the car, the engine, the chassis. These parts
24:07are getting ready for the marriage.
24:12Back in Wolfsburg, the emphasis isn't on playing to the audience, but sheer, mind-blowing numbers.
24:19Here, too, much of the work is carried out by robots, working alongside the massive 51,500
24:26strong contingent of humans.
24:31The giant body shop covers an area the size of 17 football stadiums.
24:39And in the vast assembly buildings, where engines are married with everything else and
24:43rigorous tests are carried out, cars emerge at the rate of almost 190 an hour.
24:51To store all these cars, they've built the Autostadt, or car town.
24:58Two 60-metre high dispensing towers, each with the capacity to hold 400 brand new cars.
25:05Entering the towers from an underground tunnel, new cars are lifted into place by hydraulics
25:11at a speed of one and a half metres per second, and shelved, ready for collection.
25:18Car number 4,500 leaves the Wolfsburg site, its place in the Autostadt already filled.
25:25The factory has achieved today's target, and round-the-clock production continues at the
25:30largest car plant in Europe.
25:38Battling it out to be named the world's ultimate mega-factory, one giant plant is setting the
25:45pace, Europe's largest car factory.
25:51But how will the German giant stack up in terms of output?
25:55It's time to wind up the production lines and fuel up the furnaces,
26:03as we check out production tonnage.
26:09At five, Houston, we have a problem.
26:14Plummeting from its current position at number two, the Kennedy Space Centre can only claim
26:196,000 tonnes a year.
26:21That's the weight of three shuttles and their fuel tanks as assembled in 2010.
26:28And again, this is a product that can reach the stars.
26:33The VAB may not win on production tonnage, but it produces way more information than
26:37any of the other factories.
26:39I mean, 1.1 petabytes, in fact.
26:41That's 11 with 14 zeros after it.
26:44From bites to beans, at four, it's the Kitt green processing plant.
26:49This is the giant multinational's biggest factory, its international flagship, combining
26:54food laboratories, a distribution centre and a can-making factory, altogether producing
27:00over a billion cans of food a year.
27:03In a year, this factory produced 415,000 tonnes of food.
27:07That's a huge amount.
27:08It took 31,453 lorries just to drive it away from the plant.
27:12Absolutely incredible.
27:15Throttling up to third place, the Volkswagen car plant in Wolfsburg, Germany.
27:21With an annual output from its robotised production line of 1.4 million tonnes and counting.
27:30They just happen to make three quarters of a million vehicles a year.
27:34That's just phenomenal.
27:39Taking second place, that phenomenal steelworks.
27:43The pride of South Korea, this factory produces just short of 21 million tonnes of steel a year.
27:52Not only is this more than any other steelworks on the planet,
27:56it's enough to make five Golden Gate bridges every week.
28:05But we're really pumping up the tonnage now,
28:08because one of our other factories produces even more, and by a massive margin.
28:15At number one for production tonnage, India's Reliance oil refinery,
28:19with an astonishing 60 million tonnes of refined oil every year.
28:24It actually houses the world's largest catalytic cracker,
28:27which means it produces a diverse range of different by-products.
28:31And as a result, that makes it the world's most profitable refinery as well.
28:36So let's fill up the tank and pay a visit to the undisputed king of the oil world.
28:50Early morning rush hour at Jamnagar in northwest India.
28:55One in every 50 vehicles on this and every road in the world is running on fuel made here.
29:04The largest oil refinery on the planet, 30 square kilometres beside the Gulf of Kutch.
29:11Two huge complexes with over 20,000 kilometres of piping,
29:16producing record levels of over 17 different fuels, lubricants and plastics,
29:22all made from this crude oil.
29:30At the refinery's docks, pilot boat captain Satvinder Sethi is heading 30 kilometres offshore
29:36to inspect the latest arrival, a tanker filled with crude oil, fresh from the Middle East.
29:46It's essential the refinery's supply of black gold never stops.
29:53But a fully laden supertanker carrying 300,000 tonnes of crude oil can't dock in shallow water.
30:00It must unload offshore.
30:04The solution? Connect the tanker to a single point mooring, or SPM.
30:10It's a highly specialised and tricky job that captain Satvinder oversees every three days.
30:18Getting the vessel alongside or being moved to the SPM is tense
30:23and requires a very focused concentration on the job, especially in the months of monsoon.
30:33The crude is pumped ashore and stored in one of 82 vast tanks,
30:38each with a capacity of 100,000 tonnes.
30:44Just one enormous tanker would be enough to supply an average-sized refinery for a year.
30:51But Jamnagar is far from average.
30:54It can process a tanker's worth of crude every two days.
30:59And this is where it's sent first.
31:02A specialist super-producing distillation column.
31:09The crude is heated to a scorching 600 degrees Celsius,
31:14which distills it into heavy and light products.
31:19Lighter products like aviation fuel, gasoline, LPG and diesel are more profitable.
31:28Heavier, lower-grade products such as lubrication oil are less profitable.
31:33But at Jamnagar, nothing is wasted.
31:37The heavier products are sent to this, the fluidised catalytic cracker or FCC.
31:46Here, the heavy oil molecules are chemically split or cracked to create lighter products,
31:52meaning a profit can be squeezed out of every drop of crude oil.
31:58Jamnagar, India
32:05It's all controlled from here, under the watchful eye of the company's senior vice-president, Mr E. James.
32:18This is like my temple. This is a temple of control.
32:21This room is a room from where we ensure all the plants all around are running extremely healthy.
32:28The safety of the plant is ensured every point of time.
32:31All is being monitored from here. This is my nerve centre.
32:35Back at the jetty, another of the 120 ships that are docked here every month is arriving.
32:42Captain Satvinder is overseeing this final stage of the refinery process,
32:46the shipping out of the finished product.
32:50It's up to him and his colleagues to make sure that this too runs like clockwork.
32:56Having these ships coming here day in, day out,
33:00and as pilots we being responsible for that gives you a great satisfaction,
33:05the feeling of a job well done.
33:09If you laid out all the pipe work from the factory in one straight line,
33:13it would reach from the very northern tip to the most southern tip of India.
33:17And India is not a small country.
33:24Coming up, Kennedy Space Centre has the single largest building.
33:29But each of our five megafactories is like a mini metropolis.
33:33So which has the biggest footprint?
33:36And decision time. Which of them is the world's ultimate megafactory?
33:48Five of the biggest and most complex centres of engineering and scientific excellence on the planet.
33:57But which is the world's best of the best?
34:00Counting down in five key categories, which will be revealed as the ultimate megafactory?
34:06It's close, because amazingly, three of our fabulous factories are currently tying in first place.
34:13The Indian oil refinery, the Korean steelworks and the German car plant.
34:19So there's all to play for as we throw the spotlight back on to size.
34:25NASA's VAB may be the largest single factory building,
34:29but which has the largest overall complex size?
34:35At number five, the Kit Green factory, Europe's largest food processing plant,
34:41which spreads over 226,175 square metres.
34:48Although it's the size of 56 football fields, it's still the smallest of our five.
34:55Kit Green might be small, but it's perfectly formed.
34:59In fourth place, the Volkswagen car plant in Germany.
35:04At 6.57 square kilometres, the Wolfsburg complex has 70 kilometres of private railway track
35:11and 75 kilometres of roads built just to service it.
35:16At three, the heavy metal giants, Korea's POSCO Gwangyang steelworks.
35:22Hundreds of specialist buildings cover 17.6 square kilometres,
35:28including its own dedicated purpose-built harbour.
35:31Korea doesn't actually have the natural resources to produce steel.
35:35That didn't really deter the guys who built this factory, though.
35:38They just slapped a massive great port right next to it
35:41so they could ship everything they need in and out.
35:44A refined runner's-up slot for India's Reliance Oil.
35:49Half the size of Manhattan, this gigantic complex covers 30 square kilometres.
35:56They've got a really cool space-like room where they can actually see the pressures
36:01and pick up any problems in the system. I think it's amazing.
36:05But at number one, a factory devoted to space.
36:09And space is what they have in abundance at the Kennedy Space Centre,
36:14an astonishing 570 square kilometres of it.
36:18Over three times the size of Washington DC, you could fit Manhattan into this place.
36:23You could fit Manhattan into this place seven times over.
36:28The VAB has the world's largest doors.
36:31They're 70 centimetres thick and can withstand wind speeds of over 200 kilometres an hour,
36:35which is quite handy, really, because it's based down in Florida,
36:38where they're subject to hurricane season.
36:40So, the Kennedy Space Centre wins on overall complex size as well as building size.
36:47But size isn't everything, and while Kit Green takes up less space than the others,
36:53it's at incredible speeds.
36:55So, surprisingly, it actually produces more tonnes per square metre of space
37:01than any of our other contenders.
37:04And that means it more than qualifies as one of the world's mega factories.
37:10Let's take a look.
37:13To keep up with massive demand, particularly in the UK,
37:16this state-of-the-art facility in Wigan, England, must transform 350 tonnes of these
37:24into more than half a million cans of baked beans in just six hours.
37:31Kit Green is the largest processing factory in Europe,
37:35and it's designed for one purpose alone, canning food at a phenomenal rate.
37:47It's 8am, and in the factory's loading bay,
37:51staff are overseeing the delivery of the raw product, dried haricot beans.
37:58In charge, manufacturing leader and lifelong baked bean fanatic, Graham Souter.
38:05These beans have travelled from North America,
38:08and this is the final stage of their journey to become one of our tins of Heinz beans.
38:13We're processing up to 350 tonnes a day.
38:16We blend that with 500 tonnes a day of sauce to make around 10 million finished cans.
38:21The first stage in the transformation into baked beans is the grading process.
38:27Weeding out whoppers manually would take time and manpower.
38:31The solution? A giant automated moving sieve.
38:35Only the right-sized beans fall through onto a conveyor belt.
38:38All rejections go for animal feed.
38:41It's time to actually blanch them now.
38:43We're looking to add between 15 to 60% water into the dry bean.
38:48At the end of that process, we'll be ready to send it downstairs
38:52into our filling department to be mixed with the sauce.
38:56But first, the beans face one last tough selection hurdle,
39:01and it involves cutting-edge laser technology
39:04to make sure the beans are all the same colour.
39:09Terry Morrissey started working at Kip Green over 40 years ago,
39:14long before anyone thought of using lasers here.
39:18What we used to do to get the bad beans out, it was too hot.
39:22With a spoon, we'd get a little log box and take all the black beans out,
39:26which was a bit boring, but laborious.
39:29The modern alternative, the laser beam,
39:32checks every single bean for imperfections.
39:35If it finds one that's the wrong colour,
39:38the bean is simply blown off the production line.
39:42Above the factory floor is a top-secret area.
39:46It's here the baked beans' sauce is mixed,
39:49to a special recipe they've kept under their hats
39:52ever since the first production line in the USA.
39:55There are only two people on site that know the full recipe,
39:59and I'm not one of them.
40:04Back on the factory floor, just 90 minutes into production,
40:08the beans in their secret sauce are being sealed in cans
40:12at a rate of more than 13 every second.
40:16At this point, they're still just beans,
40:19but they're about to become baked beans.
40:21And amazingly, they're baked while in the can, to 120 Celsius,
40:26before being cooled again to prevent discolouration.
40:30And although the factory is almost entirely mechanised,
40:34there is one critical job left that can only be done by humans.
40:39Even though there's so much technology nowadays,
40:42this comes down to the human part, the nitty-gritty.
40:45That's the taste.
40:46This is very important, because we're the last line of defence.
40:49If things are not right here, it could go out to the public.
40:52Everything all right, Graham?
40:54No problems at all, Pete.
40:56Can I sit down and see you, please?
40:58I can, yeah.
41:00We're actually looking for a sour or mustard taste.
41:04That's why we do a taste every two hours,
41:07so we can pick up anything that's not right.
41:09Two and a half hours after the dried beans first hit the production line,
41:13the finished product is speeding into the labelling and packaging room.
41:17So far, since we started this shift an hour ago,
41:20it would produce 52,972 cans.
41:24Just under 53,000 of those have been accepted,
41:27given a rejection of 30.
41:29That gives us 99.4% of the finished product.
41:33So far, it's been a very good year.
41:35Given a rejection of 30, that gives us 99.4% success so far this shift.
41:42In just six hours, one of the world's most high-tech food processing plants
41:47has met its astronomically high daily target,
41:50a feat that only a megafactory could achieve.
41:54Looking just the job, I think.
41:56Yeah, right.
41:58What I really like about these factories is just the speed the machinery goes at.
42:01It's a blur. It's beyond what you can follow.
42:03It's absolutely amazing.
42:05Yeah.
42:11Five jaw-dropping centres of mechanical excellence.
42:15Five miracles of engineering and science.
42:18Each of them extraordinary in their own way.
42:22But which is the overall best of the best?
42:26In identifying the single megafactory which dominates the pack,
42:31all-round performance and ambition are the keys.
42:35So we've totaled the rankings for size, output, cost and workforce.
42:41And here is the final result.
42:47In fifth place, it's that extraordinary food processing plant at Kip Green in England.
42:54Tying in third place, Germany's colossal car plant in Wolfsburg.
42:59And the place where space dreams are made, the Kennedy Space Centre.
43:05Stealing a march on both of them,
43:08second place goes to the biggest producer of steel on the planet,
43:12the POSCO Gwangyang in South Korea.
43:20Which means the world's number one ultimate megafactory is
43:24India's Reliance Oil Refinery.
43:28Dwarfing every other refinery on earth,
43:31as well as all its competitors in this countdown with its phenomenal output.
43:36This is a factory that is unlikely to be matched, ever.
43:41This oil refinery takes oil refineries to a completely new level.
43:46This factory is all about efficiency and output.
43:49It's super slick and super efficient.
43:51It's just phenomenal.