Fletchers Group of Bakeries has completed a £1m expansion of its cold storage facilities at its dedicated foodservice business unit Kara.
Kara, which specialises in frozen buns, rolls and doughballs for the foodservice and convenience sectors, has converted an existing building into a new state-of-the-art cold store, replacing a previous facility.
In a bid to double capacity, as well as enhance environmental and technical efficiencies, the new storage area will allow greater internal efficiencies with improved operational handling, stock rotation and more accurate temperature control.
According to the Fletchers Group, it will aid despatch to more than 300 wholesalers and end-users based in the UK, as well as countries across Europe.
The project forms part of a £12m capital investment programme in 2013. This includes a £4m expansion of food manufacturing facilities at London-based Grain D’Or, a brand new £7m production facility at the Fletchers site in Sheffield and the £1m new Kara cold store.
Jeff Dean, Kara general manager, said: “Cold storage is an essential part of the production process and our previous facility had become outdated. This is more energy-efficient, enables us to handle products in a more orderly way with less movement, and offers us greater efficiency in dispatching the product to third-party distributors.
“This project has allowed us to double our storage capacity to now hold up to 1,000 pallets at any one time while retaining high levels of quality and food safety.”
Kara worked with food factory construction specialist Clegg Food Projects on the nine month project.
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