THE DAILY life of a small company making kettles which are transported across the world is set to hit the small screen.
Ghillie Kettle Company attracted the interest of Francois Senecal-Tremblay, director of the Discovery Channel’s How It’s Made programme, during one of his trips to the UK.
He loved the idea of an outside kettle which worked using natural produce so much he and his team spent the day filming at their base in Weights Lane on Tuesday (February 10).
The programme will take viewers through the process of making the kettle from start to finish and will air in six to nine months time.
The company started in 2000 but the kettle itself has been around a lot longer, being first used by the Ghillies of Western Ireland in the 1800s to heat water by the river. It was then refined in New Zealand in 1929 and used by the army during the Second World War, coming to Britain thanks to George Marris and Co of Birmingham under the name Sirram Volcano Kettle.
Today Steve Belcher, Alan Smith and Nicky Bray manufacture around 1,000 a month, shipping them across the UK and the world including America, Korea and Hong Kong. It uses a central chimney to enable brewers to simply start a fire in the base and boil water within around five minutes, with different sizes available.
Steve told the Standard he was ‘shocked’ when he was approached by the programme.
“We are a small company so didn’t expect them to come. I am looking forward to seeing the programme, metal spinning is a dying trade so it’s nice for people to see it done by hand,” he said.
Francois added: “I was in a store somewhere and saw the kettle with its ‘made in the UK’ sticker so I wanted to use it on the programme.
“As an outdoors person finding a kettle that can work on natural materials like twigs was really cool.”
