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Packaging
Progress
When the largest mail-order
bakery in New Hampshire needed packaging speed, it automated
with style.
by Steve Berne
BAKING
& SNACK April
2001
What began as
home-baked treats for The Josiah Bellows House Bed & Breakfast in 1986
has grown to incorporate Bellows House Bakery, Walpole, N.H., now the
largest mail-order bakery in the state.
"When we first started baking
cookies at our B&B in 1986," recalled Lois Ford, president,
"our signature cookie was called Frosted Chocolate Nut. We wanted our
guests to feel at home, so every night we treated them to a full plate of
our cookies placed on their nightstands."
The cookies were an instant success.
"So many of our guests asked us to ship cookies to their homes and as
gifts for their friends, relatives and business associates that we
expanded our baking operation in 1988," explained Ms. Ford.
"That's when Bellows House Bakery was born, and we have been baking
and shipping cookies all over the country ever since."
In addition to its cookies, the bakery
produces brownies, blondies, gourmet shortbread, muffins, scones, cookie
pops and whoopie pies to wholesale, catalog and mail-order markets. It
also manufactures private-label products, as well as corporate and other
premium gifts.
Bellows House Bakery products are made
from scratch with real butter, fresh whole eggs, other high-quality
ingredients and no added preservatives. Steady growth in business prompted
an expansion in October 1998 and a need to automate its packaging
operation.
"As a medium-size bakery, we are
constantly faced with decisions involving the cost of equipment purchases
vs. the cost of labor," said Ms. Ford. "There are usually
solutions at the low end of the cost spectrum and at the high end, with
very little in between for the moderately-sized manufacturer."
Ms. Ford and her
husband, Lou Ciercielli, have unique equipment management experience that
helped them find short- and long-term solutions to their bakery's growing
needs. They both have advanced degrees in mechanical engineering and
worked for General Electric's steam turbine/power generation division.
Their jobs included equipment design, project and program management,
factory and field training, turbine assembly management, marketing and
sales.
Past experiences help them solve many
current production problems. "One of our major bottlenecks was our
packaging line." noted Ms. Ford. "Every employee was involved in
wrapping products."
On average, the bakery operates five days
per week, 11 hours per day. During the seasonal-high fourth quarter,
schedules spread to seven days per week, two shifts per day.
Regardless of the plant's processing
efficiency, packaging was a time-consuming operation. "We spent a lot
of time moving products from station to station to get the products loaded
by hand, bag by bag, then sealed using hand and foot heat sealers,"
according to Ms. Ford.
Researching a solution to their
slow-speed, high-labor packaging line, Ms. Ford and her husband visited a
factory with several wrapping machines in use.
"Seeing the equipment operate in a
fast-paced production environment convinced us of our need to purchase a
wrapper," Ms. Ford stated. "After considering several options,
we selected a Fuji-Formost FW-340mII horizontal form/fill/seal
wrapper."
The wrapper, made
by Formost Packaging Machines, is designed for continuous operation at
speeds up to 250 packages per minute. Currently, Bellows House Bakery
packs at about 100 units per minute.
"What sold us was the reliability
and flexibility noted by other processors," said Mr. Ciercielli.
"Our wrapper is easy to set up and can handle a wide array of forming
blocks for different size products.
"We did not have this capability
before getting the wrapper," he added. "We can now be very
flexible for our customers wrapping products individually, in trays or
other configuration."
How do the machine-packed products compare
to the hand-wrapped items? According to Ms. Ford, "The
machine-wrapped packages are smooth and uniform, with minimal extra air.
They are also clean, clear and crisp with equally sized seams that are
completely sealed and achieve a professional overall appearance."
In addition, the bakery now uses Mobil
100ABX film in three different widths that significantly enhances the
shelf life of its products, according to Ms. Ford. "We were using
2-mil polypropylene bags, finding them difficult to hand-seal consistently
and resulting in an extremely short shelf life for our high-moisture
products."
An important part
of the wrapper, according to Ms. Ford, is its end sealers, which assure
uniform sealing temperatures for consistent sealing and operate at lower
temperatures, saving energy. The wrapper's design can handle adding a date
coder and labeler when needs warrant.
"Soon after installation of the
machine, we calculated a 400% improvement in packaging time for a large
run of shortbread cookies," Ms. Ford stated. "And that is very
fortunate since our volume increased 60% in the last year alone."
After initial installation and start-up,
maintenance has consisted only of maintaining the cleanliness of the
machine, according to Ms. Ford. "And because of the wrapper's
flexibility, fast changeovers and high wrapping speeds, it will serve our
needs as product lines and production demands continue to grow into the
future."
END
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ARTICLE REPRINTS
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