A grand vision, realised

Daniels Chilled Foods are a manufacturing company whose product ranges includes New Covent Garden Soup, Johnson’s Juice, Fruit All Fresh Salads, Sandwich Fillings and a B2B Ingredients business, with their own distribution arm to support the operation.

Daniels’ customer base falls into three categories: food service, retail and export – supplying companies such as Sainsbury and Waitrose in the UK; Berghams and Del Haise in Belgium and France and food outlets including Starbucks and Pret a Manger.

Almost four years ago Daniels was purchased by SFI (Singapore Food Industries). SFI have three core businesses in Singapore: Food Distribution, Food Manufacturing and an abattoir and hog auction. With further operations in Australia (Fisheries), China and Ireland (ready meals and ambient soups), the UK’s ready meals operations (ICL) and the range of products manufactured by Daniels Chilled Foods extends the group’s activities even further.

Three years ago the new Management Team at Daniels developed its five-year strategic plan in order to grow the business. Their vision was for Daniels to be known worldwide as the UK’s most progressive Chilled Food Manufacturer. Further to this aim, Daniels has recently invested £6 million to open the UK’s most advanced fresh juice factory at its manufacturing site in Headcorn, Kent. The new facility was built to a very high standard and was awarded the highest possible grade from the British Retail Consortium following its most recent audit.

The site produces a wide range of fresh juice drinks (orange juice, grapefruit juice, lemonade) and a range of Fresh Smoothies and blended drinks under the Johnson’s and New Covent Garden Foods brand for both retail, catering and foodservice customers and is the largest and most advanced site of its kind, featuring blending facilities that are unique in the UK. Mandy Drabwell visited the factory and met with the Group Operations Director, Terry Haigh to find out more.

Vision

“The management team defined three key goals for achieving its vision to become the UK’s most progressive chilled food manufacturer,” explains Mr Haigh. “Firstly, to grow our New Covent Garden brand into a £100 million franchise by 2008; secondly, to develop key own label partners and, lastly, to consistently achieve the highest rate of return on sales and profit after Tax ratios of all peer groups in the UK.” To achieve such bold objectives required significant investment. The last two years has witnessed the improvement of the soup manufacturing facilities, resulting in the launch of a new range of fresh meat and pasta sauces. “We have also built a new state-of-the-art fruit manufacturing plant in Leeds – which took just 13 weeks to complete,” continues Mr Haigh “and a new distribution operation in Peterborough”. The state of the art juice manufacturing plant at Headcorn in Kent, however, cost £6 million to build and contains some of the most advanced technologies in the beverage manufacturing industry. But what features make the factory so advanced?

Hygiene

Daniels’ attention to hygiene at every stage of production is evident when you visit the factory. From the fabric of the building itself (everything is stainless steel) to fully CIP-able equipment, hygiene and food safety is clearly a priority for Terry Haigh.

“There are several significant elements of the Johnson’s fresh fruit juicing plant that serve to illustrate its high standard,” explains Haigh. “Given that we are producing freshly squeezed juice we operate a complete chill chain. This means that the environment is carefully controlled at a low temperature – from the moment the fruit is received in the factory through to filling and palletising of the final product. The air is carefully monitored throughout and even the bottles are chilled before receiving the juice”. Strict hygiene measures, such as this, help to prevent the growth of microorganisms and hence ensure the full shelf life of the finished product.

“We also adopted an air handling process to control the environment,” says Mr Haigh “an essential feature – especially for the juice extraction room where a lot of acidic oil from the oranges is released into the air”. Here, air can be replaced up to eight times an hour, enabling employees to work comfortably in the environment and also minimizing the amount of potentially corrosive substance in the atmosphere.

“An important feature of the filling room is the positive air pressure which ensures control of the environment,” says Mr Haigh. The slight increase in pressure within the filling hall causes air to be pushed out when someone enters the room, preventing microorganisms from entering and getting into the open bottles. This is an important measure for this stage of the production line, as it is the only point at which the juice comes into contact with air. “SARA rapid roll shutter doors are opened manually by a lever but close automatically behind you,” continues Haigh “this ensures that the entrance is open for the minimum amount of time – an advantage when you are trying to control possible air contaminants.”

Cleaning is obviously an important consideration for any food manufacturer and Daniels’ juicing plant is no exception. Most equipment is able to be cleaned in place and is centrally controlled by PLC controlled CIP Cleaning system. This also enables full traceability of the CIP procedures by being downloaded onto PCs in the main offices. Manual cleaning is aided by simple mechanisms wherever possible – an example of which are the pipes positioned away from the wall to enable easy access for cleaning from behind.

Quality basics

Of the £6 million spent on the new juicing facility, the cost of the building itself was £3.7m and the remaining £2.3m was spent on machinery. “Major investment in automation and blending technology was crucial to this operation” stresses Mr Haigh. “Washing, extraction and blending are the key areas of focus in ensuring the best possible condition of juice prior to filling and our blending facility is a USP – designed specifically for this operation”. The unique method that Daniels will use (the system is in place and will be employed in the coming weeks) is to juice the fruit prior to any batch tests. The usual method is to analyse a representative number of fruits from each batch in order to ascertain the sugar and acid levels and, hence, determine the brix v. acid ratio. Batches are then portioned in order to produce the ideal juice according to a pre-determined brix to acid ratio, and then juiced. However, this can produce unreliable results owing to the fact that not all fruits in a batch have the same properties. For this reason, Daniels carry out QC tests on a single variety of raw juice and then determines the necessary ratio for blending, which is carried out via a fully traceable touch-screen process control panel. “This enables us to manufacture blends far more accurately and consistently than ever before” he states.

Daniels Chilled Foods prides itself on not only producing best quality products, but also being the lowest cost producer. For this reason, a focus on ultra efficient processing technologies is another priority.

Economic production

The whole factory layout is designed to be as space efficient as possible, with all production areas closely aligned with each other. This saves energy consumption and costs resulting from the chill chain policy and also speeds up production, as the juice does not have to be pumped far. “Continuous processing 24/7 is essential to achieve maximum turnover so it’s important to keep operations easy to manage”. Hymo tipping bins and scissor lifts receive the raw fruit at a very high throughput – a rate that enables continuous processing. Such equipment is an example of the high level of automation throughout the factory that keeps production steady, without the inconsistent human factor.

FMC Foodtech provided Daniels with the ability to “extract juice at a higher rate than any of (their) competitors in the UK,” according to Haigh. The mechanisms leading from the spreader table guide the fruit through ‘sizers’ that enable them to be directed to the correct extractor. This is important as, if the fruit is too large for the extractor it will be crushed and release bitter oils into the juice. It also creates wastage and prevents efficient juice extraction – something that Daniels prides itself on. “In fact” stresses Haigh “we more than comply with FEMAS (waste regulations) and pass the orange by-product onto a local farmer to use as co-feed for cattle. This is both economical and environmentally friendly.”

“Additional processing equipment has been installed to aid the quality of the juice: to ensure correct pulp levels it is vital to have the correct extractor set-up; strainer tubes are an important part of the operation so we need to ensure they are correctly set up to achieve the best possible juice. The ‘hydro cyclone’ improves juice quality by removing particulates commonly known as ‘defects’ (seeds etc.). Juice then passes through an FMC Finisher, which removes pulp and provides varying levels of pulp suspended in juice down to a completely smooth juice.”

At this stage, no matter how cold the resulting liquid, the juice is passed through a chiller to ensure its temperature is a uniform 2°C. It is then transferred into one of ten 10, 000 litre tanks, where it will either be stored and used as fresh juice or pasteurised through a shell-in-tube pasteuriser. Blending will then take place at this point.

“New Posimat bottle unscramblers were installed to aid the efficient running of the site and enable faster change-overs,” continues Haigh. “These machines are also kept in chilled conditions to ensure that the packaging is the same temperature as the juice when being filled. This is key to maintaining the quality of the finished product.” Quality is not attained at the expense of efficiency and line speed is assured at every stage. “Two new high speed filling machines have been installed alongside two existing machines. We have benefited from an improved design in that they assist with GMP as they are easy to clean and maintain,” says Haigh. The new machines fill a range of formats: 250ml, 330ml, 500ml and 1 litre bottles. The Dawson bulk filler is used for 2.27 and 3.4 litre containers.

Not that this is a problem for the next stage in the production line. Krones’ high speed labeler represented a significant investment for Daniels – but a worthwhile one. The piece of equipment has two separate stations enabling bottles to be labeled with continuous changeovers reducing stoppages and downtime. This ensures that the filling process is maximised.

Given the level of automation throughout the factory, there is a minimum amount of factory employees. Seventy per cent of the workforce is stationed in the case packing room where the majority of the work is manual. Boxes are then loaded onto pallets – a ‘live’ racking system – where a FIFO (first in, first out) system operates. Between 100 and 200 pallets are collected per day and sent to the central station at Peterborough, where distribution is organised. “Between 60 and 70 per cent of juice made on a given day will be with the customer by the next day” says Haigh.

Why Headcorn?

“The Headcorn site was chosen for the £6 million investment for several reasons,” explains Haigh. “Firstly, the close proximity to the port – just 15 minutes to Sheerness – allows us to Quality Assure all incoming fruit prior to arrival on site. As a result we are the only manufacturer in the UK who can ship fruit from the storage warehouse, juice and bottle within just two hours. This is a USP in itself and access to the motorway and our sister site in Peterborough eases any potential distribution issues.” Eighty per cent of Daniels’ incoming fruit arrives at Sheerness via their single supplier whom they have used for three years. This is a unique situation in the industry and has developed to become a strategic arm to their business, enabling continuity of product all year round.

Another benefit to extending the Headcorn site was they were able to relocate many of their staff from London. “This enabled us to maintain our skill base. Also, the existing management infrastructure at Headcorn understood the drinks operation as the smoothie and blended drinks were already manufactured at the site.”

Plans for the future

“We are currently working on a revolutionary piece of kit to improve the keeping qualities of our fresh juice. This will aid improved shelf life and result in reduced wastage for our customers.” Mr Haigh is keeping quiet with details of this technology, but adds: “Trials are under way and results will be available in the next three months.”

Looking back at Daniels’ strategic five-year plan, which was started three years ago, focus was on building and strengthening their position in the UK. “To that end,” explains Haigh, “we have maintained our position in Europe rather than grown. We currently export soup and added value drinks to Belgium and France, but this is certainly an area we will further explore in the future.” Watch this space!