Spooner makes bid to expand food oven sales
office in Ilkley, Yorkshire as part of the company's strategy to
provide customers with a better service.
Spooner wants to expand sales of the company's food ovens in the UK and throughout the rest of Europe. The company's food oven division has had "phenomenal" growth over the past five years, said sales and marketing director Steve Newell. The UK market for baked goods has grown by 3.4 per cent since 2003 to reach a value of £4.7bn (€6.8bn) in 2004, according to a report by Euromonitor. Bread was the largest sector, worth £2.3bnin 2004, or about 47.6 per cent of total sales. Spooner manufactures ovens for both food and non-food industries. About 80 per cent of the company's industrial ovens are exported mainly to Europe. The company hopes to build on that network toexport its food ovens, which up to now are sold to the major UK bakery companies. The new tunnel oven, completed last month, will allow customers to test how it bakes their food products. The oven's ability to blow air around the products to be baked allows food makers to getconsistent results, Newell said in an interview with FoodProductionDaily.com. . Tunnel ovens use conveyors to bake high quantities of food products. "The clever thing is to get the same results over a wide variety of products," he said. "The oven's forced convection process moves air evenly around the goods to bebaked." The oven uses three independent, direct gas-fired heating units and can be used for baking products at temperatures at up to 350°C. Spooner is targeting the oven at makers of bread, biscuits, petfoods, cereals, cakes, confectionary, pizzas, pies and convenience foods. A damper controls the airflow to the top and bottom chambers, allowing processors to control baking times and create surface effects on the products. The oven's control allows users to adjust theconveyor speed. The included software controls the recipe mix and records the production parameters used during the baking process. Technical changes can be made to the oven design to improve heat transfer rates,accessibility and overall reliability. "Our customers are under ever increasing pressure to develop new processes and new products very quickly, and the flexibility of this equipment will enable them to bake and test products ina way which can be replicated exactly on production machinery," Newell said. Some customers have used the oven for testing their products since it was built. The summer months are now fully booked up for tests, he said.
