CPM Wolverine Proctor – A Total Solution Supplier For Breakfast Cereal Manufacturers
By Robin Holding, Commercial Director, CPM Wolverine Proctor Ltd
The breakfast cereal industry sector has seen a fairly steady growth over the last few decades with new markets such as Asia and Eastern Europe developing a taste for UK and western style foods. However, in recent times, the major cereal manufacturers have been challenged by calls for recipe changes, on-the-go product varieties and now, drinkable versions of what hitherto were traditional market favourites.
This presents a great challenge to the cereal R&D teams and, further upstream, to the machinery manufacturers. Clearly, we need to work together to develop new processes and products to be able to satisfy consumer demand, but there can often be a trade-off between what is desirable and what is practical or cost-effective. This is where it is particularly important to develop an effective dialogue between the marketing, R&D and supplier’s engineering personnel, so that ideas can be explored, analysed and then discounted or pursued as appropriate.
CPM Wolverine Proctor Ltd has been supplying processing machinery to the food industry since early last century and continues to do so on a global basis. We have manufacturing facilities in Europe and the USA and our customers are becoming progressively more reliant on us as a total solution supplier, partly because they have had to reduce their own engineering and R & D resources to remain competitive, but also because they value the depth of experience that we have built up over the years and around the world. We have product development facilities available in both the UK and USA and we encourage our customers to carry out secure lab trials when developing a new product with us.
Project Management and Engineering Resources
In order to meet demand, we have developed our project management and engineering resources across the board, bringing in new design initiatives and process knowledge, allowing us to draw on experiences that may have come from unexpected applications in other industry sectors and enabling us to offer a truly turnkey supply, from raw material intake right through to finished product packaging.
Dryer feed end.
For all types of breakfast cereals, we are able to offer complete plants based on traditional batch steam cooking or extrusion cooking, drying and tempering, flaking and shredding, baking and toasting, coating and decorating. Our recent acquisition of TSA Griddle Systems now enables us to add to the breakfast capability with waffles and pancake systems, in addition to our tried and tested granola and cereal bar lines.
Complete Plant Design
Having embraced the latest in computer graphics and software, we use “Inventor” packages to design a complete plant in 3D and can ensure that it will fit into an existing factory without problem by digitally scanning the facility at the outset of a project. This saves huge amounts of time and money because potential interference problems are caught before any metal is cut.
At the detailed engineering level, hygiene continues to be a major driving force for our new design features, benefitting the cereal manufacturer in areas such as washdown, cleaning and drainage, minimising downtime and avoiding cross-contamination, energy wastage, etc.
Naturally, we do not profess to manufacture every machine that we supply, but by teaming up with other machinery manufacturers and specialists, we can offer cereal manufacturers a “one-stop shop” for everything from raw material handling right through to finished product palletization, all managed by a dedicated project management team.
Preferred Machinery Supplier
Our continuing drive to be the preferred machinery supplier means that we are actively encouraging our customers to talk to us about what they like and dislike, listening to their ideas and identifying the priorities for their business. Only then can we hope to meet and exceed their expectations by supplying them with the optimum solution.
We are proud to be a major supplier to many of the major breakfast cereal manufacturers around the world and we look forward to continued success with them, as well as with new players in the future, whatever their product lines might be.
