jessa

The blog post title is based on the IFTF Newsletter: Foresight Moves Us to Make Good Choices
(Issue #21 | June 2, 2026).

I was in kindergarten when I first visited a Coca-Cola factory in Davao City. The plant tour was part of our educational trip. I can’t remember the technical details, but I still remember the feeling of standing at the end of the factory line, waiting for our free Coke bottles. And someone broke a bottle, spilling soda across the factory floor.

My next plant tour experience was in high school, when we visited Franklin Baker—a manufacturer and exporter of desiccated and processed coconut products—in Sta. Cruz, Davao del Sur. Then, in and after university, the rest of the plant tours I’ve experienced were at energy generation facilities: grid transmission control centers/substations, solar farms, a hydropower plant, coal-fired power plants, a battery energy storage system, and even a nuclear power plant, with the exception of a steel manufacturing plant. In the Philippines, these tours are coordinated through schools or employers, always free — but never something you’d queue for on a weekend.

Meanwhile, in China, parents organize plant tours for their children as part of their weekend activities. While these tours are free, getting tickets into factories is said to be challenging. From the article In China, car factories are becoming the new classrooms:

Xiaomi, NIO, Xpeng, BMW, and Volkswagen have all opened their production floors to public tours in China — and the demand has been extraordinary. Xiaomi’s lottery-based reservation system saw acceptance rates as low as 0.4%, with scalpers on secondhand platforms reselling spots for thousands of yuan. Parents are driving 60 kilometers in sub-zero temperatures, wishing to let their kids get a first-hand understanding of China’s latest high-tech developments. The factory floors are becoming new classrooms.

If industrial tourism takes root in the Philippines, exposing children to real-world industries would broaden their perspectives and perhaps inspire them toward STEM. Food processing and manufacturing would be natural starting points. And if China is any indication, the families first in line would be those who can already afford to be there. The question of who gets access matters as much as whether it happens at all.