Stuart Grogan, Operations Director at BCH, discusses the company is shaping the future of confectionery production with flexible, efficient solutions
Could you explain how your technology has evolved to meet the changing demands of modern confectionery production?
We are constantly evolving to keep in line with latest technological advancements. This includes working with leading international suppliers and growing industrial partnering relationships, particularly in the control and automation industry where a lot of the improvements in performance and efficiencies can be observed.
There is a particular growing demand from our clients requesting more connectivity, condition monitoring for preventative maintenance, remote assistance and simple device hot swapping. All of which form part of our latest portfolio of products to assist customers with their needs.
Sustainability is a major focus across the food industry. How is BCH addressing sustainability concerns, particularly in terms of energy efficiency and reducing waste in confectionery manufacturing?
These topics are very important points for consideration and implementation at BCH as we continue to challenge ourselves to provide our clients with optimum solutions.
Regarding energy efficiency, BCH’s solutions already use a fraction of the energy in comparison with other systems in the market, but we don’t stop there. Our latest design and manufacturing processes ensure we continue to work even harder to offer more energy efficient process solutions than ever before.
To complement our own practices, we also work very closely with our supply chain to ensure we remain at the forefront of integrating the most energy efficient components on our systems.
The reduction of waste is an important consideration for BCH on any project, especially with an extrusion line. Therefore, our latest automated systems now allow for a faster start-up, shut-down and change-over keeping waste to an absolute minimum.
In some instances, it is also possible to re-use start-up and shut-down materials by way of our latest reworking systems. Thus, reducing waste even further.
Could you highlight a recent project or product development that demonstrates BCH’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge solutions in the confectionery sector?
2024 sees us releasing a major overseas project to allow our client introduce a brand-new range of multi-colour extruded products for one of their household named brands that dates back over 50 years.
The challenge for BCH was to provide a new production line that retained the existing product ranges textures, colours, flavours and shape profiles while using a totally new confectionery production process in that of multi-colour starch gel extrusion equipment.
Automation and digitalisation are transforming manufacturing. How does BCH integrate smart technologies into its systems, and what benefits are you seeing in terms of productivity and product quality?
BCH have been supplying equipment with software solutions from when they were first introduced to industry. However, as technology continues to advance at pace, we are constantly challenging ourselves to make our systems the most interactive, user-friendly and intuitive to the user. An element of this comes from spending time with our clients to understand the latest challenges and aspirations they have and turning these into a solution that contributes to using the least amount of labour required to operate the line and ensure consistent, repeatable and high-quality products.
A more recent development in our confectionery systems is our bespoke reporting package that provides product traceability. We implemented this feature through client consultation and converting our well-established reporting systems that we deploy across the food sector.
Given that our install base covers the globe, BCH’s advanced software systems play an important role and deliver many benefits. The software doesn’t just allow support for our engineers during the commissioning phase of a project, it also allows us to remotely access and interrogate the process with ease from our UK headquarters, meaning support can be provided much faster.
A key example of this was our ability to remotely supervise the installation, commissioning, training and product start-up of a complete project in Egypt.
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