Visit to the Tayto Castle

Classes IB and M found out first-hand how our favourite snacks - crisps - are made. Both classes went along to the Tayto Castle in Tandragee for a detailed tour, as part of a Geography trip. We were taken around all the different rooms and discovered that making crisps is far from simple. There are many different processes the crisps have to go through to ensure that we can safely eat them. As there are many different flavours of crisp, each flavour has to be carefully constructed and inspected. The potatoes are grown by the finest farmers, so we can have the best crisps. They are kept in dark and cold conditions to achieve the best possible outcome. They have to go through numerous processes: washing, packaging, peeling, slicing, and further stages done by machines alongside computers. But even though most processes are carried out by machines, people are employed to make everything go that little bit faster. We tasted warm crisps stright out of the oven, without flavour, and then compared them to flavoured ones - what a difference!

We all enjoyed our visit to the Tayto Factory, and it became very useful to our Geography studies. And I think we all enjoyed our free packs of crisps, too!

Report by Leah Martin and Lauren Buckley, IB