Production

apetito’s production facilities span across three factories, with two based at our Head Office in Trowbridge.

The main factory houses our Meals department with 130 employees, six high-speed production lines and over 300 individual, multiportion, PET and foil products. Our Sweets department runs alongside creating over 250 cakes, desserts and traditional puddings made by 50 employees.

The pie site at Trowbridge primarily produces products for the popular brand Country Choice with 70 employees across four lines producing a selection of pies, pasties, lattices and top-selling sausage rolls.

Production Director Graham Forrester comments on recent changes and the direction of the factory for 2008:

“We’ve had our annual audit by EFSIS to check the highest standards are being maintained - both sites gained an A Grade Standard and it’s clear we’re coming closer to achieving optimum performance. In the last two years I remember celebrating producing 280,000 meals for Wiltshire Farm Foods in a week recently we made 500,000 with the same amount of equipment - so essentially we’re working twice as fast which is a great achievement.

This is due in part to us providing further training for all our staff - we now have NVQ Level 2 for everyone in the factory and we spent a lot of time training up the managers, supervisors and team leaders with six-month leadership courses. We’ve been putting more focus on people which is great to see and we’re witnessing great results across the business.

apetito has undergone a lot of recruitment, taking on a new Technical Manager, Factory Manager and a Chartered Engineer. It’s a vigorous program and the induction process can take anything up to thirteen weeks. This can be frustrating as it polarizes your instinct – naturally you start a new job and want to move forward with it and show people you can perform well. It can seem excessive but is entirely worth it in the end as you learn a wealth of information you wouldn’t have done otherwise.

It’s particularly invaluable in Manufacturing as we produce over 700 meals and use over 500 raw materials - you know the people, the machinery and how the business operates as a whole - there’s no point in asking someone to manage a process when they aren’t aware of exactly what’s happening. There is extremely rigorous testing for senior roles in Manufacturing before you can even gain an interview so we can be confident our new positions are filled by high calibre individuals.

Our biggest project at the moment for 2008 is a £1.7m spend to refurbish our low risk area, bringing packaging and food into the factory and either sending it straight in to be packed or processed - be that cooking, making a sauce or roasting it beforehand. It involves over half the factory and will be an immense revamp.

For our customers we’re installing a new mashing machine costing £250,000 using 100% real potatoes instead of powder – we’ll see a big improvement on taste and texture. The project should take around 26 weeks but obviously the biggest challenge for apetito will be installing it and making meals at the same time.

Another project for next year is extending our factory hours to keep up with increased demand - particularly for Wiltshire Farm Foods, our frozen meals delivery specialists. Our current opening hours are 6am to 10pm but we are looking to extend this to include nights, the biggest consideration currently being able to schedule cleaning alongside increased productivity.”