(prodigious, or so i think la) paper plant

Today, I was allowed to come into work late. Abooout four hours late. But I had to wake up early. Because Nicole, the HR dept girl, she suggested I could come for an orientation tour at their printing plant in Tai Po. Tai Po is nearer to the New Territories, so it is the otttther side of HK.

I had to buy (yes, buy) a HK$5 shuttle bus ticket from her to take the one-hour bus ride over to Tai Po. Cos the bus would go to Kowloon Tong and another point to pick up other SCMP employees.

I don't really get why it's a shuttle bus when there's a ticket to pay for. But oh well.

The HK$5 ticket, which has to be put into a box thing in the bus.

From a distance it looks like this. This is apparently where the staff from Quarry Bay will be shifting to late next year. Thank God I wont be around, imagine if I have to travel from HK island to New Territories everyday, PLUS the HK$5-ticket everyday. How unearthly.

There was some briefing and all that before, but Nicole said I didnt need to go for it. I took a copy of the slides worksheet too though - of the company history and all that - which can help me in my report later on. At least it was in English :)

Nicole was nice enough to stand by me the whole one-and-a-half tour about the place so that she could explain to me in English what the orientation tour guide was saying.

The pre-printing process was mainly on how the people print their templates on zinc sheets and how it is being transported down to the printing area, which is HUGE.

It may not look like it but where I was standing was only the second floor I think. It's like a HUGE gymnasium-side area that has HUGE machines, pipes and travelator-things. When you first step into it, the first smell you take in is the almost-overwhelming ink smell.

From another angle, it really just looks like one factory doesnt it. But this is ONE machine, with about 15 printing units in between. The double-glass-protected area on the right is the control room where the technicians are.

EACH of the printing unit is this big. I took the picture from the back so that you can see the unit in comparison with the orientation tour guide. Printing is said to start at 3am, everyday.

The printing gets a little noisy, well you can imagine. With the double-glass insulated glass control room and signs like these. Too bad the orientation is in the day, cos we wont be able to see the printing process taking place. Oh and the machine has one outlet that 'folds' the paper too.

You know, these are actually new paper rolls on the bottom floor. Apparently, they are being brought in from countries in Europe and China.

The paper rolls were being stored at a floor lower down. Those in brown just have that protective brown sheet to keep the paper from being dirtied.

Each of those massive things weigh a ridiculous amount of that. That's just darn heavy for paper. And ONE roll can only print out maybe 20,000 copies of newspaper. Imagine how many more you need!

You want to know how huge these paper rolls are? Compare my hand with the thickness of each giant roll of toilet paper.

After that it was moving onto the post-printing process, where the papers are packed and stored. Packed as in, sometimes the papers would have the many SCMP supplements included, so the machine would have to drop the magazines in between the sheets.

This is only one part of the post-printing area. Again, it is one huge gymnasium-sized area with the many many trails and hanging pipes and what not. Apparently this huge place took a year to set up, with the parts being brought in and its assembly took that long.

The freshly-printed papers from the printing area is brought in from the next room into here with these clip-looking things:

Sometimes they go through the dropping in of magazines, which is the reason why papers are never folded, exactly - the top front is always a bit longer than the back, for easy opening. After being inserted with the supplements, they reach their storage area:

This is one tower of horizontal storage of papers, that are placed there waiting for delivery time after that. Not sure how many can be stored, but it looks alot. Also considering how many of these tower things they have.

This is only ONE part of the big place to have these storage thingies.

Well, after the tour for the newbies, there was apparently some lunch but Nicole had told me that I can take the shuttle bus back from where I came. Considering I was quite sleepy, I took it as a hint and went back to office - the newbies didn't seem all receptive to any smiling or possible interaction anyway.

Tried to get a picture of the plant on the outside while being on the shuttle bus, but just so happen a lamp post had to come right in the middle.

On the way back, it was only then did I really really notice how packed the buildings in HK were. While they have their fair share of landed property, apartments and condos, most of them can look like these:

They remind me alot of those nests that swifts make in caves. It makes me wonder and look at our HDB flats, which are considered to be probably much more spacious on its own. What are we really complaining about? :/