TECHNOLOGY BAKERY Roboticsand O
ne bakery that has taken this advice on board is Bells of Lazonby, a UK-based family-owned producer of artisan breads and baked goods. The business, which was
founded in 1947 by John Bell, today employs 250 staff and produces baked goods for major supermarkets and coffee shops. In a competitive market, Bells of Lazonby,
now run by John’s son Michael, recognises the need to keep pace with changes in technology as well as consumer tastes, and it has invested in technology, with the help of Made Smarter to ensure it is able to remain competitive. “We have to keep developing new ways of doing things and to produce more with what we’ve got. It’s the only way we can
keep growing,” says Michael Bell, Managing Director of Bells of Lazonby. Across its two bakeries, portioned cake and gluten free slices account for over 50% of turnover. With demand for its products increasing, the business found itself close to capacity because its production processes were unable to cope with increased throughput. Michael explains the production challenges facing the bakery in more detail: “The cake- cutting process requires a lot of manual handling such as loading, unloading and packaging the products. These manual processes, as well as the machinery we use, slowed us down and resulted in inconsistency in the quality of the cut products. While sales were growing, we were in danger of having to turn new customers away unless we found a more efficient solution.”
16 Kennedy’s Bakery Production Feb/March 2024
software can offer a helping hand
Bakeries should be looking at new technologies to enable them to continue to compete, according to Made Smarter, a UK-based initiative designed to encourage industry, including small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), to adopt digital technology and upskill workforces.
To capitalise on the growing ‘free from’
market, Bells of Lazonby committed to spending almost £2 million to double the size of its special diet factory and invest in a raft of new manufacturing technologies. Using match-funding from Made Smarter the business was able to adopt two programmable ultrasonic cutting robots. The robots are capable of slicing cake in an infinite number of sizes and shapes, which means operators won’t have to change the cut pattern between products and can be moved to other areas of the bakery. The robots can link to Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software system and are programmable to take into account customer orders, resources, and the fluctuation of the price of the ingredients. Commenting on the system, Michael
bakeryproduction.co.uk
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