Burton’s boosts capacity with £4.6M factory investment

The facility, which employs 800 people, makes Jammie Dodgers as well as Wagon Wheels, Maryland Cookies and Cadbury’s Fingers, produced under licence.

The latest cash investment there builds on £2M spent on the plant last year and includes £1M for pilot control room baking systems with an expected return on investment of two years.

‘First for the industry’​​

“A first for the biscuit industry, the camera monitoring technology is currently used in the automotive and printing industries but is now being applied to biscuit production,”​ Burton’s said in a statement.

“It involves using cameras to continually monitor key processing parameters, e.g. dimensions, colour, moisture, which are normally manually recorded at set time intervals.​

“All of this information is then sent through to a computing system that takes the data and integrates it in to a graphic format that we have devised here at the site and is then displayed on monitor screens.”​

Higher product quality​

Burton’s had been able to increase the accuracy and frequency of its quality checks to achieve a consistently higher level of product quality as a result of implementing the new systems, it said.

The innovation has also enabled it to cut waste due to faster identification and correction of potential quality issues, the company claimed.

And it said the systems, which it plans to roll out to all sites throughout this year, could also be used to help in plant maintenance. For example, if a dimension was revealed to be going out, or be out, of specification, temporary action could be taken or permanent repairs could be made.

Skills improved​

It added that no new jobs had been created as a result of the factory development, but staff skills had been improved through a £100,000 training programme to equip them to use the technology.

Burton’s said the overall investment in Llantarnam had increased production volumes at the facility and would enable it to deliver more new product development.

When the biscuit maker unveiled investment plans in April this year, it said it would help to drive international growth and reported a record market share of the domestic sweet biscuit market.