“We can recover, we can rebuild” – these are the words that Julia Banton uttered to the team at Roberts Bakery following the devastating fire that ripped through the Northwich site last June.
The day started like any other for Banton, who has recently stepped up to managing director at the family-owned business. She was in Leicestershire at a client meeting when she received a call from the head of engineering to say, ‘don’t worry, but it looks like we’ve got a small fire’. Not long later she received another, more emotional call saying, ‘we’re going to lose the bakery’.
As operations director at the time, Banton rushed back to Cheshire to see the situation for herself. “It looked, externally, as if it’s in one contained space and it was but that space was probably the worst place it could have been,” Banton tells British Baker. “It’s where two of our bakeries cross over, it’s where all our flour supply distribution system is, our electrical supply, our gas ring main, our compressed air facility, so all of the infrastructure and services were wiped out.”
“The fire literally hit the pause button on everything”
With all staff safe and accounted for, Banton knew she had to keep the team calm and show confidence that this challenge could be overcome. “A few of us in the leadership team went ‘it’s OK, it’s a conveyor belt, it’s an oven, it’s machinery – we can rebuild’. But there are a lot of employees in this business that have been here since they were 16 and they’re now retirement age, so for them it wasn’t Roberts Bakery; it was their bakery,” she recalls.
Banton’s words of confidence weren’t simply for show. She joined Roberts Bakery following the unexpected death of her husband of 25 years – relocating from Canada back to her Northern roots as she wanted to be nearer her support network of family and friends.
“The fire was a walk in the park compared to what I went through on a personal level,” she admits. “I wanted to find an employer that felt like a second home, and I always remember that when I came for a walk around and spoke to a few people on the floor that it was a happy workforce, it was a passionate workforce, and I kept thinking ‘this is what I need right now’.”
With that in the back of her mind, it was all hands on deck as the business plunged into “disaster recovery mode” in a bid to get loaves onto shelves as soon as possible and resume normal service for customers and employees.
Roberts Bakery was part way through a five-year strategic plan which outlined its ambitious goals for “growth, profitability, innovation, and all that good stuff”.
“The fire literally hit the pause button on everything,” Banton explains. But, in times like these, it’s important to look at the bigger picture and it was this that led to the ‘most important operational overhaul in decades’ for Roberts Bakery. The quickest way to recover involved splitting the two bread plants at Northwich which crossed over on multiple levels – housing them in separate units also allows for future risk mitigation from business interruption such as power outages. To do this, the Little Treats biscuit factory was moved away from Northwich, landing four miles up the road in Winsford where a ‘Centre of Excellence’ for biscuit production was created.
Bread plant one has been up and running at full capacity for a while now along with the biscuit factory at Winsford, which Banton describes as “night and day” from what it was before. Plant two is due to be fully commissioned and producing loaves at the end of November.
“We’ve had massive support from our customers and people that have said ‘it’s OK we’ll wait for you, but in the meantime, we’ll go and get a contract over here’. Some people had to delist items with us, certainly in the biscuit facility for a few months, but they’re coming back already,” she says.
The momentous occasion was marked by the firm’s biggest ever marketing campaign ‘Back to our best’ which focusses on promoting the taste and quality that has delivered more than 130 years of success for the firm. The TV ad, which is part of the campaign, features 25 staff at the Northwich site.
The campaign presents a “clear message” to customers that Roberts is back. “Our quality, our consumer experience, the taste, the texture, the consistency has really been noticed.”
Futureproofing for growth
With production ramped up, the financials are set to follow. The 2023 results, which cover the year to 25 August 2023, reported an 8% increase in turnover to £96m and a significant improvement in EBITDA from a £2.5m loss to a £200k loss. The 2024 revenue will, naturally, be lower as Roberts temporarily lost some capacity, but Banton insists the firm has been cost effective to mitigate this.
“For the next year our plan is to get back to the day before the fire and see our revenue as what we projected for FY23, if not better,” Banton explains. “We’re in a good position to do that when we think about the plant capabilities, the reliability, the investment that we’ve had, and the workforce just raring to go. I’ve never seen people so happy to get back on a bread plant and make bread.”
Recouping lost time and revenue is just part of Roberts’ plan for growth. Another focus will be on expanding its presence in existing markets with added value products while maintaining quality. “We realised that our quality is our unique selling point,” Banton says, noting the comments and demand seen across social media when certain lines became unavailable.
Digestion Boost, officially known as the Wholemeal Bloomer with Digestion Boost, was chief among the items shoppers were desperate to get their hands on. The bloomer is high in fibre and described as ‘packed in calcium to complement a healthy gut’.
“As we’ve phased the commissioning of the bakeries, we’ve done the standard white loaf first, then the malted, then the seeded and then we’ve got into the wider range,” Banton explains. “So, Digestion Boost will absolutely be coming back which is great because I love it too.
“I think we all underestimated within Roberts how much that product was loved until we started seeing the comments [on social media] and through our customer feedback forms online. It has opened our eyes that we probably underestimated that product.”
It forms part of the brand’s drive on health benefits as it looks to add value and meet changing consumer needs. Sourdough is also “on the horizon” but Banton insists Roberts has to get it right to ensure the product “grows our brand equity rather than negatively impacting it”.
Mixing it up
Roberts isn’t stepping away from its core lines of white loaves and tiger rolls though, simply maximising its newfound capacity and efficiencies by grasping the opportunities that arise.
“I don’t think sliced white bread is going to disappear anytime soon – it’s a staple, but there’s always noise in the market that people want something different. We need to get ahead of that curve and keep moving forwards, and that’s where our growth plan comes into play,” she adds.
This is where the as-yet-unmentioned Ilkeston bakery in Derbyshire comes in. The site focuses on speciality breads and morning goods for the out-of-home market, with bread and rolls sent for food-to-go ranges in supermarkets, coffee shop toasties, and more. The variants include panini and sub rolls, cranberry bread, poppyseed bread, and onion bread.
“A big portion of our volume is out of home, which is where a lot of the added value is so we see that as something we can grow and develop,” the MD shares.
Biscuits, now safely nestled in their new home in Winsford, are also primed for growth. Roberts currently provides individually packed biscuits to the coffee shop market as well as gingerbread house kits to several retailers.
“Businesses need to generate the income to reinvest and that’s where we know we have opportunities, we know we have demand, we’ve just got to recover from this chapter of our history and get back to where we were; then get back on that roadmap to growth,” Banton declares.
So, nearly 18 months on and Banton’s words “we can recover, we can rebuild” are ringing true. Now, she is ready to take on the next challenge.
“The timing is right,” she says. “I’m almost at the end of the recovery where the team can stand on their own two feet. I can hand over the reins somewhat and then really focus on the commercial side of the business, growing some of these relationships, and driving that five-year plan.”
And then the next five-year plan, and the one after that.
“I expect to retire from here. I’m not chasing the global vice president role anymore – been there, done that, got the T-shirt,” she laughs. “I like what this business is about. It’s aligned with my own values, and I feel very privileged to hold the Roberts brand in my hand on behalf of the family.”
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