Kettleby Foods, Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, United Kingdom

Kettleby Foods is not a universally known brand name, probably because all of its production is carried out for just one single customer. That customer is the leading UK supermarket chain Tesco. Kettleby Foods produces the vast majority of Tesco ready meals, including over 70 different lines. Examples are cottage pies, stews, casseroles, pies and dumplings for the 'healthy living', finest and value ranges.

Kettleby Foods is a division of Samworth Brothers, a privately owned family business and a leading UK player in the production of quality savoury and sweet food products. The group has 13 divisions incorporating well-known names such as Ginster Pasties and Dickson and Morris pork pies, and has a turnover in excess of £450m, employing over 6,000 staff.

IMPROVEMENTS TO PRODUCTION

Producing over 70 different products for Tesco is a hard task and Kettleby Foods needs all the extra time available to manufacture and ship products to satisfy all of the supermarkets. Any improvements in the process that can save time are a welcome development. In February 2007, Kettleby Foods increased throughput with the installation of depositors from Turbo Systems on fully robotic production lines.

The company has high quality expectations to fulfil and has to carefully manage the production process to ensure that standards are maintained and, in many cases, exceeded. There are also strict delivery deadlines – in the food production market, the time between orders being received and delivery date is very short. The equipment used can affect being able to meet premium brand requirements of decoration and product finishing.

TURBO SYSTEMS

Kettleby uses Turbo Systems servo-driven depositors and three-axis robotic arms for filling and finishing its lines of shepherd's pies with beef mince protein in a gravy sauce base. The product units are topped with patterned piped mashed potato over the base, via the three-across servo depositors each connected to three nozzles mounted on a robotic beam. The beam and nozzles operate to a configured pattern using a PLC control system (the pattern can be changed according to Tesco market research findings).

In an average day 40 different products can be run across all the production lines, so changeovers need to be easy and quick. Turbo have designed the systems in such a way that products coming through the lines have a fine degree of finishing that gives the foods a home-cooked look about them.

In addition, there are a number of Turbo depositing systems used on Kettleby's craft lines for higher premium products where a degree of hand finishing is required. Quality checkers are used at every stage of the process to ensure the produced meals are of the very highest standard. Quality is important as complaints to Tesco from customers can mean financial penalties for Kettleby Foods.

OVERALL PRODUCTION PROCESS

There are four main areas to the factory. Intake and storage is where the raw materials (meat, fish and vegetables) are received. Low-risk preparation and storage is where the raw materials are processed and stored (potatoes peeled, meat minced or chunked). High care and assembly is where the cooking and manufacturing process takes place and is where the meals are all prepared and packaged. The low risk and high care areas are completely separated for strict hygiene reasons.

Packaging and distribution is where the outer sleeves are placed on the products. Here the products are boxed, palletised and put into lorries for delivery. Production planning is crucial as orders have to be placed for raw materials and equipment configured for production of multiple products. The lead time on a product such as shepherd's pie may only be five hours.

KETTLEBY FOODS

When Kettleby Foods opened in April 1999 it was designed as a purpose-built recipe dish bakery to provide premium-quality ready meals to an expanding market. Initially the £15m plant opened with a range of just 12 products, which has now grown to around 70. To begin with 70 people were employed at the site. However, this had risen to over 640 at the beginning of 2007.

The plant also includes a development kitchen for production of new experimental dishes using fresh meat, fish and vegetables. In order to ensure that the freshest herbs are available to the development team, a specifically designed herb garden was planted giving the chefs the flexibility and choice of fresh herbs as and when required.

Main products include cottage pies, Lancashire hot pot, beef stew and dumplings, chicken and broccoli pies, Cumberland pies, shepherd's pies and beef rosti.