Amazing story in our teacup.

EVERYTHING stopped for tea at Tetley's Eaglescliffe works yesterday as the plant celebrated 40 years of making little perforations.

Built in 1969, the factory which has employed generations of local families welcomed the Tetley pensioners back for a birthday bash. The factory, which has gone from two tea-bagging lines to one of the most advanced automated facilities in Europe, produces 280 stock keeping units (SKUs) on 33 lines. Sixteen billion tea bags leave the factory every year.

It's now one of the biggest volume producers of tea bags in the world, with 85% of production satisfying the English and Northern Irish thirst for a cuppa. The facility has benefited from substantial investment over recent years by Indian owners Tata, whose portfolio also includes another well known British brand, Jaguar Land Rover.

Keith Garrett, the plant's longest serving member of staff, said the plant had changed dramatically since he first joined in 1967.

"The machinery was much more antiquated. The blend control panel looked like something out of the Wizard Of Oz. Tea came in tea chests and originally the lids had to be removed using an axe. Eventually a de-lidder was introduced, but there were splinters and metal fragments left behind. The tea then had to be passed through a series of magnets to clean it before it was put into a hopper.

"Initially, there were two lines running producing square tea bags into boxes of Tetley 36s. The packers had to remove the two stacks of 18 teabags out of the cassettes with their fingers and put them into the cartons!" See Tuesday's nebusiness supplement for the story of the Tetley Tea folk on Teesside.

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40TH ANNIVERSARY: Keith Garratt, longest serving member of staff at Tetley's Eaglesciffe plant Picture by ANDREW GRAY