Providing A Helping Hand For Small Scale Food Producers- December 11th 2019

 

As a leading manufacturer of high quality depositors for the food production industry, a key part of the service Riggs Autopack provide is the opportunity to provide free of charge machine trials and product testing for both existing and potential new customers.

By seeing the results of their products being deposited during trials, it provides the customer with a full understanding of how a Riggs Autopack depositor will enhance their business prior to placing an order.

Within our factory in Nelson, Lancashire, we have a fully equipped test kitchen where our Technical Engineers are able to conduct product trials. It is fully equipped with our range of depositors and filling machinery, and the wide selection of bespoke ancillary equipment allows us to tailor the product trials to suit the customer's specific needs.

Where trials are not practical at Riggs Autopack, either for reasons of food hygiene or the necessity for product to be freshly made, we offer the option of conducting trials at a customer’s site. However, on occasions, this is not always practical; sometimes due to secrecy of new product developments, other times due to the limitations of existing production demands, or in the case of start-ups, perhaps the lack of production facilities.

This is when the teamwork of Riggs Autopack and The Nowt Poncy Food Company can be of real benefit. Based in Rossendale, Lancashire, The Nowt Poncy Food Company is an artisan business owned by Julian and Karen Abel (pictured below).

 

 

The company produce a wide variety of cooking sauces, hand cooked to maintain flavour and consistency, and they only use fresh herbs like basil and oregano. Julian and Karen want their sauces to be low in calories, salt, fat, sugar, saturated fat and still taste amazing. They also want them to be vegetarian and vegan friendly and suitable for kids and adults alike.

For Nowt Poncy, the sauces they produce have to be simple and delicious. They want it to be authentic, just like the locals make it, nutritious, without nasty preservatives, as healthy as possible and they don’t want to spend hours preparing it either.

They produce their own range of sauces, but as an additional part of the company, they provide their commercial kitchen for hire to small scale food producers at daily rates (as shown below). By combining a daily hire of the Nowt Poncy Kitchen, with trial equipment provided by Riggs Autopack, companies are able to conduct food safe trials.

One such recent trial was conducted by Biotiful Dairy that needed to carry out ‘contained’ filling of pouches with their Kefir based drink to obtain shelf life samples for a new product launch. Riggs Autopack was able to provide a Model 1000 Series 3 depositors for the product trials whilst Nowt Poncy hosted the day in their kitchen facility.

 

 

Riggs Autopack Technical Sales Engineer Steve Burnham, who was on hand on-site to help with the product testing, commented “In addition to enjoying a fabulous Nowt Poncy curry for lunch, kindly provided by our hosts, the day was a huge success.  Biotiful Dairy were able to produce plenty of samples and gain a greater understanding of the flexibility, ease of use and cleaning of the Riggs Autopack Series 3 depositor.”