When out on the road one of the questions that Steve Henshall, Sales Manager at Alfred & Co, gets asked the most is how to go from a small artisan production run to producing more than 400 litres an hour.
Alfred & Co have been providing new and refurbished equipment to the ice cream industry for over 70 years. This knowledge and experience allows them to provide trusted recommendations whether you’re just starting up or looking to upscale your production. So if you’re looking to upscale, Steve has the following advice:
“You may be looking to upscale for a number of reasons, the most common is to shorten and streamline your production to give you more time to either sell your current products or to develop new ones.”
“You could already be in an ideal position to make the next step. Your production likely already consists of a batch pasteuriser, batch freezer and potentially a small 300lt ageing vat. If this sounds familiar, you would be able to simply invest in a continuous freezer and go from circa 100 litres an hour to over 400.”
“However there’s a few things you need to be aware of before making the leap. Firstly, you need to know that ultimately your final product will be different to that produced by a batch freezer”
“Secondly, your new continuous freezer is only efficient and beneficial to you if you’re running it to full capacity. These freezers are not designed for small quantity runs due to the time involved in setting up each run, sterilisation and most importantly product waste.”
“You will get the same amount of product waste whether you produce 50 litres or 400, so it’s of course much more efficient to produce 400 litres. Due to this limitation on a continuous freezer, we would highly recommend holding on to your batch freezer for those instances where you want to make a small volume of speciality flavours.”
“Finally, you need to make sure you have the capacity to package and store your increased quantity of ice cream! If you are already doing all of the above, the next step would be to upscale your pasteurisation process.”
As Alfred & Co are agents for Technogel, FIC & Gram they are able to source, supply, commission and maintain all the ice cream equipment recommended above. Visit www.alfredandco.com to see their range or get in touch with Steve Henshall on 07980 832642 or steve.henshall@moodydirect.com.
