NORBEV

The company has been owned and managed by a member of the Harkness family since production commenced in Ballymena in April 1919.

The original name “The Braid Mineral Water Company” and the first factory was located in an old laundry building in 17 Railway Street Place. Everything from washing the bottles to corking and labelling was done manually. The products were delivered to local shops by horse drawn carts until the purchase in 1927 of a “Guy lorry” with solid rubber tyres.

It was in 1949 that the first “door to door” sales, direct to the customers were introduced by The Braid Mineral Water Company, delivering mineral throughout Northern Ireland. By the end of the 1950’s, the premises were becoming too small for the growing delivery fleet so a larger site was then acquired at 100 Railway Street and a purpose built factory constructed. Production at this site commenced in 1961 with a variety of soft drinks and in 1973 the first contract bottling was done for Coca Cola.

In 1995 the decision was taken to change direction from returnable glass products to contract packing of PET bottles and the Braid Soft Drinks name and door to door distribution was sold. After a refit the factory reopened in May 1995 as “Northern Bottlers”, a subsidiary of the parent company Braid Holdings and started to produce 500ml PET for Coca Cola Lambeg. From then to the present the renamed Norbev has experienced continual growth with the installation of state of the art bottling lines and the expansion of the range of products from carbonated, still with sports closures to pasteurised products and fruit juices for local and overseas markets.

Today, with line speeds of 25, 000 bottles per hour, Norbev can produce more soft drinks in 10 minutes than what they could produce in a whole day, 85 years ago!!!