A Cup of Banana-Cino: TLC: FAM Trip to PAOS Industries soap factory

"Whoa, people working here must smell damn good!"

That was my first thought when i took my first whiff after stepping into the factory. After all it is a soap factory.

It all started early morning last Thursday, where as usual I took my own sweet time dressing up and not looking at the clock, then panic because i was late so I rushed like crazy to college to be there by 8.15 only to find out everyone was still relaxing, waiting and even catching some shut-eye. Jeez. Only till 9am did Dahlia call and found out that the driver was not informed about picking us up to go to the factory in Shah Alam. He only arrived like an hour later which was actually our original time of appointment with people at the factory. Took us another 45 mins to Shah Alam even though the driver decided to be on the fast lane all the while.

All 13 of us reached the factory like almost an hour late but still the kind people at the factory, Mr Delon ...and some other names I can't remember still put smiles on their faces when greeting us. We, really felt guilty for arriving late, gee. Btw, why only 13 of us u may ask? That's coz big ol' generous TAR College did not want to provide us with a bus but instead a van(although, I must say, the wan was HUGE).

Anyway, we started out with a presentation of the company by Mr Delon(what a name) before heading off to the factory. Too bad we weren't allowed to take photographs in the factory.

The way they manufactured soap was pretty similar to what I already had in my mind. There were only minor things I didn't really think about such as temperature of the soap thru its manufacturing process actually plays an important role and the raw material for soap could actually be used as soap itself already. What surprised me was how fast they were produced. Its like all machine and probably packed about 120 bars of soap a minute.

Anyway, this factory we visited manufacture soap bars for Dettol, Johnsons, and companies from overseas as well including Japan, Australia, some European countries, and Russia. So we managed to get a look at all kinds of soap bars which we never seen before, including my favourite, an oatmeal soapbar which was for a Russian company. Oh yeah, and of course the TLC brand!!!

Anyhow, our trip was actually to know more about the soap bar manufcturing process so that we can include it in our exhibition. The best part of the trip was when each of us were presented with a paperbag full of soap bars. There were about 10 soap bars in there and most of them are for overseas market. How cool. I looked in the bag and thought "Wow, 1 years supply of soap".