Inside the Kit Kat factory in Jebel Ali — in pictures

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  The plant began producing Nido powdered milk in 2009 and Kit Kat in 2010, before moving on to Quality Street and Maggi products. Today it produces more than 5,000 Kit Kats a minute and one billion a year.

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  The Kit Kat is made of two key components; the creamy chocolate and the crispy wafer.

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  A Nestle employee checks for defects. If the wafers are too dry, they will suck up the moisture from the chocolate, and start to break the bars.

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  Xolile White, Factory Manager at Nestle Dubai Manufacturing inspects the production line at the factory in Jebel Ali. There are six flavours of Kit Kat produced in Dubai with eight different recipes.

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  Employees checks for defects before the bars go to packaging. While machines have done most of the work up until this point, humans are now needed. There are about 300 employees working in the plant, running three shifts over 24 hours.

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  The bars pass through thick rolls of foil, printed with the familiar Kit Kat design. There is also a roll of the thin, red “peel” tape, which is used to open each individual bar. Overall, the machine can process 680 pieces per minute.

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  The resulting display boxes and multipacks are manually loaded into cardboard boxes, taped and shrink wrapped, ready to be shipped off.

While many snacks in the region seem to be manufactured elsewhere, the beloved Kit Kat bar is made right here in the UAE. Take a pictorial tour of Nestlé’s manufacturing plant in Dubai. All photos by Razan Alzayani for The National