Starfrost have installed spiral cooling equipment for Haywood and Padgett, enabling the bakery to treble production of its award-winning scones.

Haywood and Padgett produces fine quality scones and bakery products for large supermarket retailers such as Asda, Morrisons, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Iceland, Aldi and Lidl, as well as producing its own label range.

The bakery recently required new cooling equipment to increase its scone production following a factory expansion at its Yorkshire based bakery. Haywood and Padgett turned to Starfrost to design and manufacture a bespoke spiral cooler system for the 31,000 sq. ft. purpose built factory.

Starfrost custom built a cooling system that enabled Haywood and Padgett to significantly increase production capacity. The Starfrost cooling system features two Helix spiral coolers, each constructed with a double drum that uses one single continuous belt, for maximum product throughput.

The Helix spiral coolers deliver a space saving solution which contain over 1400 meters of belt, designed to utilise the height of the factory and maximise floor area of the bakery. The spiral cooler design allows production to load and unload product from low level without any high level transfers between drums, simplifying the bakery’s production line and reducing crumb loss of the scone products.

Both Helix spiral systems are designed as ambient coolers for controlled, natural temperature reduction of the bakery’s scone production. Natural cooling instead of forced cooling maintains the form and characteristics of the bakery products which results in optimum product quality whilst keeping operational costs to a minimum.

The Helix spiral coolers feature plastic modular belting using Intralox DirectDrive™ technology which eliminates product movement, an essential requirement within the bakery industry whereby product positioning is critical. The DirectDrive™ system integrated into the Starfrost Helix works by positively engaging the inner edge of the belt with the drum to drive the belt, the innovative design allows for the bakery to continuously operate the spiral cooler and removes the need to stop production for cleaning, a common downtime issue with manufacturers processing floury products.

Andy Harrison, Project Manager at Haywood and Padgett discusses the cooling equipment installation at the bakery: “The Helix spiral cooler system has boosted processing capacity by a substantial 70%, we no longer have a bottleneck in our bakery, which allows production to run quicker and smoother. The Helix system also cools our products individually which has positively impacted product quality and consistency. The impressive design of the Intralox DirectDrive removes product movement and preserves product shape of our bakery products as well as eliminating friction issues between the drum and the belt.”