Key points
I have been very fortunate to have worked in retailing for Marks & Spencer and Tesco, in the branded world for Coca-Cola and for two own-label manufacturers. This has given me a great chance to visit hundreds of sites over the last 25 years so I have been able to get a good understanding of what is good and what works.
I joined Kolak just over a year ago and, since I have been here, I have seen the firm undergo a significant amount of investment in its people, ways of working and manufacturing facilities.
We make a broad range of snacks including low-fat and hand-cooked crisps, extruded and low-fat snacks, pellet-based snacks, organic and kosher products, mini poppadums, prawn crackers and now, with our new factory, ready-to-eat popcorn.
The business (Return to top)
The Kolak business is largely European-based and 90% of our output is high street own-label, which is supported by our own brands: Kolak, Jacksons, Diamond and the new Dylan’s range, which are hand-cooked crisps made from the finest quality potatoes, cooked in small batches and seasoned using only natural flavours.
It was established in 1985, has delivered 28 years of unbroken growth and employs 750 staff.
My main focus over the past year has been working with our team on the design and construction of our new £9.6M snack site. Not often in a career do you have the chance to get involved in a brand new build and then kit it out with new equipment. Our new snacks site is one of the best, if not the best, ambient site I have seen. The fact that we are family-owned has been a big advantage; there is a long-term investment commitment and we were able to crack on and quickly press ahead with the new build.
New factory (Return to top)
The 4,181m2 factory – next to our existing site in Park Royal, London – is devoted to producing extruded snack products and ready-to-eat popcorn. It is a state-of-the-art facility that sets us apart from our competitors and gives us a real point of difference.
It will allow us to strengthen our position as a leading own-label snack supplier supporting retailers with a pipeline of new products that will continue to drive growth and repeat sales. We have identified popcorn snacks as a key growth area for us and we have had a very good response from customers so far.
It will also greatly increase our capacity and, in a challenging economic climate, it also enables us to remain highly competitive on price.
It was fantastic to have the opportunity to effectively start from scratch and kit out the new site to the highest possible standards. The site has a number of new innovative features including an HMI (human machine interface) recipe management system and new advanced flavouring systems that ensure consistent snack flavouring is achieved at all times.
There are dedicated lines to eliminate cross-contamination of product and further enhance the management of allergens. We have added eight of the latest high-speed bagging machines, achieving 140 bags per minute. These are linked to automatic multipack machines to further improve efficiency and performance.
We have also taken the chance to factor in the best manufacturing processes, which are critical in maintaining safety and quality.
Challenges (Return to top)
Over the years, one of my big bugbears has been maintaining and cleaning bucket elevators because it is a real hygiene challenge. We have managed to get around this by using a vacuum transfer system and gravity feed operation.
Opportunities to build a new site and kit it out like this don’t come around very often and it has been a real pleasure.
That said, it can be a big challenge. The development of the site was hard work but we were fortunate to have a great team in place.
I think the biggest challenge was not to be distracted from our existing operation and its day-to-day running. For anyone with a technical or operational background, developing a new site is always the sexy part of the job. If you are not careful you can be distracted by the future at the cost of the present. We got around this by having a dedicated project team for the new build, lead by Rikin Lakhani our commercial director, with the rest of the team focused on the existing facilities and its on-going development.
While we have clearly invested heavily in the site, we are also investing heavily in our people.
Integrated operation and technical teams have played a pivotal role in developing the new and existing facilities and putting in new ways of working. We are taking a one-team approach and have just embarked on our KoLearn training and team development programme, which sets out to underpin our company values and to meet the requirements of our customers.
At Kolak we make it a priority to treat our people well, help them develop and give them a positive working life. To us, this means creating an environment where employees can develop skills. The KoLearn programme aims to provide training, personnel development, on-the-job learning, coaching and feedback. We know our success depends on motivated and committed employees. We need them to feel they play a real part in helping our business meet its goals. We get independent feedback on our people performance through our ethical audits. We were pleased with the very positive feedback at our recent audit and it has inspired us to make an even greater effort in the future.
Key issues (Return to top)
Looking ahead, two key issues for us are sustainability and overcoming a number of technical challenges.
For us, sustainability means doing the right thing when it comes to valuing limited resources and using them as effectively as we can. Our overall aim is to reduce our carbon footprint and become a more energy efficient manufacturer. Sustainability is at the very heart of our business and always on the table for discussion. Our customers are also placing greater and greater emphasis on sustainability and it was a key consideration in the construction of the new site. We built in the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle. Not only is it good from a sustainability angle, but it also makes commercial sense!
From a technical perspective, as the trend towards healthier options continues, salt, sugars and saturated fats are examples of the type of ingredients that our customers and consumers would like to see less of in our products. They want to see more fibre, vitamins and healthier oils such as high oleic sunflower oil.
Increasing demands from our retailers and consumers on both quality and provenance also cannot be ignored. The horsemeat scandal means we are all now operating in a very different world. Its impact on provenance will be felt across the whole food chain. Our customers are more interested in supply chain traceability and looking for the confidence they need.
We and our customers are always looking at innovation. We have recently put in place a centre of excellence programme where we are using chosen suppliers and research bodies to develop new products. For us, new product development, speed to shelf and flexibility are key to our offer.
A final challenge has been the testing times brought on by adverse weather conditions. Last year's perfect storm of misery hit the potato sector, as one of the wettest summers on record resulted in poor yields and quality along with rising production costs. Ensuring you get the best potatoes on the marketplace can sometimes feel like herding cats.
That said, I think the premises, equipment, investment and people here at Kolak mean we are ideally placed to tackle these challenges and we're very confident about the future.
Watch our exclusive video in which Crew describes how the new site has enabled Kolak to tap into soaring demand for popcorn.
Factory facts
LOCATION: 308–312 Elveden Road, London, NW10 7ST.
PRODUCTS: A range of own-label and branded crisps and snacks.
OUTPUT: In excess of 15M standard packs a week.
CUSTOMERS: The majority of supermarkets.
OPERATING HOURS: 24h operation, six days a week.
TURNOVER: £61M
Personal
NAME: Sterling Crew
AGE: 53
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: Working on the building of the new factory here at Kolak Snack Foods. Building strong effective cross- functional teams, writing Coca-Cola's global good manufacturing practices standard and the Tesco due diligence rules.
OUTSIDE WORK: My passions are rugby – I used to play for London Welsh – and collecting and trading fossils.