“We have put a lot of money into one of our salad factories in Scotland,” Gates told FoodManufacture.co.uk. “We had a whole range launch recently for one of our major customers, which has gone down particularly well.”
In total, Gates continued: “We have invested in four of our largest salad factories, in Scotland and Lincolnshire, and we’re making really good progress there … all investments have been in the multi-millions, in the low single digits. This has been around supporting capacity for growth for three of our largest customers.”
The plants receiving the investment are Bourne Prepared Produce, at Bourne, Wingland Foods and Bakkavor Salads, at Spalding, and Caledonian Produce at Bo'ness in Scotland.
It was difficult to quantify job growth resulting from the cash injection, but it would have a positive impact, the company confirmed.
Financial expenditure had not been limited to those sites, Gates said, with areas such as pizza production receiving renewed focus as well.
£35-40M a year
“We invest £35-40M a year … We have to keep investing in maintenance in our factories to ensure they are kept up to scratch and continue to meet the very high technical standards we would expect and our customers would expect.”
Gates said the chilled food manufacturer’s constant cash injections helped keep it at the forefront of emerging trends in the sector. It was currently responding to a surge in demand for healthy food products.
Announcing first quarter results yesterday (May 8), Bakkavor revealed it had launched 250 new products in the 13 weeks to March 29 alone. “We had launches across a whole range of categories in the quarter and across a range of customers,” said Gates.
‘Healthy ranges’
“A fairly large proportion of the products we launched was for healthy ranges and was really around growing the category as a whole.” Bakkavor was gaining UK market share in this and other areas of prepared food, he claimed.
The company’s new product development team currently had a strong focus on tailoring products around food occasions, such as breakfast and afternoon tea, he added. “We can service these occasions across a range of categories.”