Adelphi Manufacturing customer BD Foods are an innovative creator of restaurant quality meal accompaniments, including sauces, dressings, chutneys, soups and more, who fill and distribute their products from premises in the beautiful coastal town of St Leonards-on-sea.
From humble beginnings in a portakabin in early 2001, BD Foods has grown exponentially and now occupies seven units of Castleham Industrial Estate and employs over 125 members of staff.
Adelphi Manufacturing are proud to have been able to facilitate this journey; in July 2001, BD Foods took delivery of an Adelphi Cerberus filling machine to replace an existing filling line from another supplier which wasn’t meeting needs. Managing Director John Davis was keen to stress the “trusted guidance” and “good sense” of Adelphi Manufacturing’s Sales Director Dean Willis (with whom he has maintained a great relationship), throughout the consultation and purchase process.
Before the Cerberus, John was manually filling bottles of dressing, and admits struggling to meet the increasing number of orders. He describes sleeping on the floor of his premises, working until 2am and beginning again at 6am, to fulfil production demands! To relieve the pressure on John, Dean was able to negotiate an extra-quick delivery time for the machine.
It was gestures like these, where Dean went above and beyond, which made all the difference to John. “Dean has dropped machine components to my house before, when we were in real need”, he reminisces. “This is why it’s great that Adelphi are a local manufacturer; it’s important to us to buy in the UK”.
In 2011, when BD Foods’ production demands had increased further, Adelphi Manufacturing were pleased to supply the Response benchtop filler to suit their needs; a semi-automatic volumetric machine, the Response efficiently fills a wide range of product viscosities, including BD Foods’ dressings and chutneys, with equal ease. The Response is quick to assemble and clean, meaning that changing between products and containers is as easy as possible and production downtime is kept to a minimum; BD Foods can swiftly switch from filling 25ml glass bottles up to 5kg tubs, as required. These time-saving factors are of particular importance to John – their production facility contains an obsolete fully automatic filling line which is no longer in use, due to the length of its cleaning and changeover routines. “BD Foods have found it more time-efficient to fill using Adelphi’s semi-automatic Response benchtop filler, than using the fully automatic line”, says John. “The higher production downtime when cleaning and changing the complete line meant that we were losing out on valuable filling time, which is not the case with the Response”.
BD Foods now own eleven Response benchtop fillers, which they have mounted onto stainless steel trolleys for mobility. “What we love most about the Response”, enthuses John, “is the flexibility it gives to our work space. We can adapt the layout of our machines and space as production demands, and when one machine needs cleaning, we simply wheel it away and replace it immediately with another”. He also describes the reliability of the Response as a key factor when purchasing more; “every time we’ve moved away from Adelphi’s filling machines, we’ve had issues – and you can quote me on that!”
Indeed, the Response has proved so popular with BD Foods that when purchasing complete processing lines for sachets and pouches, they have asked suppliers to swap-out their own brand of filler and engineer-in a Response benchtop machine!
BD Foods also utilise large stainless steel jacketed vessels, created by Adelphi Manufacturing’s sister company Pharma Hygiene Products Ltd. The 400L vessels are used to keep products at the correct temperature while they are being transferred between mixing and filling. Stainless steel is a more durable and environmentally friendly option than plastic vessels, which compliments the ethical considerations at the heart of BD Foods’ practice.
Are you producing for the food industry and looking to take your first steps into automation? If so, please don’t hesitate to contact Adelphi Manufacturing on +44 (0)1444 472300 or email sales@adelphi.uk.com to see how we can help grow your business.
