INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY TAKES SMES IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY TO THE
NEXT LEVEL
Ready Foods is a
medium-sized USbased
cook and
chill company which
manufactures soups
and sauces for restaurants and the
meat industry. Thanks to a unique
cooling system from HRS Heat
Exchangers, which has cut the time
it takes to chill one of Ready Foods’
core products by a third, it is now
able to compete with much larger
businesses.
This is crucial because, for owners
of small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) keen to make the
leap into the big league, it can feel
as though the rules of the game are
unfairly stacked against them. In the
food and drink industry, small and
medium-sized processors can find
themselves at a disadvantage when
tendering for lucrative contracts with
large restaurant and retail chains,
in so far as they may lack they
footprint, equipment or skill sets
required to meet the high production
volumes these customers demand.
But some SMEs have managed to
break through this glass ceiling and
are enjoying profitable relationships
with nationally-renowned names
after increasing not the size of their
operation, but their productivity.
Productivity is measured by the
ratio of output per unit of input. It is
closely linked to efficiency, ensuring
that every piece of equipment
and every part of the process is
optimised. The owner of Coloradobased
Ready Foods realised that
they would need to increase their
productivity if they were to take their
business to the next level.
After receiving a large order for one
of its meat marinades from a leading
US chain of quick-service Mexican
restaurants, the company knew
it could only fulfil the customer’s
demand if it increased capacity. The
existing process of kettle cooking
and steaming the marinade, then
chilling it in 5lb pouches in a water
cooling system for three hours,
would not allow it to meet the
client’s request for 2,000lb totes. So,
Marco Antonio Abarca, president
and owner of Ready Foods, set out
to find an alternative solution that
would enable them to decrease the
length of time it took to cool the
marinade from 200˚F to 38˚F and
thereby increase production levels.
New Zealand is
a nation of small
business owners.
According to
government data,
less than one per
cent of enterprises
have 100 or
more employees;
however, these
firms engage 47%
of all employees in
the country.
The HRS cooling system has cut the time it
takes Ready Foods to chill its marinade by a
third, enabling them to compete with much
larger companies
FACTORY
26 OCTOBER 2019