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Multitex4 boosts quality and productivity for Irish bakery

Date: 18 April 2007

Dough piece coiling on a Multitex4 moulder

'Straight out of the box' benefits

Delivery of a new Multitex4 moulder from Baker Perkins provided an immediate quality and productivity boost for Irwins of Portadown.Not only did the machine work ‘straight out of the box’, product quality was clearly superior.

Irwins is the only remaining locally owned plant bakery in Northern Ireland, established in 1912 by the grandfather of the existing joint managing directors.

The new machine was working 36 hours after arrival on site.

Irwins took delivery on Wednesday, installed it flawlessly themselves the following day, and were in full production on Friday.   They used just four tin straps worth of product during setting up – then saw an immediate quality improvement.

Loaves now have stronger sidewalls, a whiter colour and a better texture.

Baker Perkins has supplied over 60 Multitex4 units and have utilised this experience to compile a set of factory settings that allow the unit to go straight into production.

Installation problems caused by incorrectly set machines that require test runs with inevitable loss of time and materials, have been virtually eliminated.

Purchase of the new Multitex4 was driven by the need to add capacity.The one existing moulder – a Baker Perkins Supertex – handled both plain and fruited doughs, and changeover involved considerable cleaning downtime.

The Supertex now handles fruited doughs, the Multitex4 doughs for 400 and 800 gram loaves.

The Multitex4 also increases throughput potential by 25% compared with the previous machine.

Irwins compared the Multitex4 with competitive machines, before choosing the robustness of performance and quality of the Baker Perkins unit as the best available to take them forward.

Irwins produces over a million bakery products per week: a broad range of pan and batch breads including the Northern Ireland market leader Nutty Krust; rolls; hotplate breads; speciality Irish breads; scones; muffins and pancakes.

More than 40% of bread output travels outside Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK and Ireland, and the company employs around 450 people in Portadown.

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