Better and more efficient

Joseph Zaleski is the President of Reading Bakery Systems. Bastian Borchfeld talked to him about progress in bakery technology and the iba.

Borchfeld: Mr. Zaleski, you have worked in the baking industry for more than thirty years. What were the biggest changes, especially in the area of oven construction, and what has changed to the greatest extent?

+ Zaleski: Certainly changes in technology and building techniques have improved oven reliability and performance over the years. Better and more efficient combustion burners and associated valves make ovens run more reliably. Using new CAD tools and oven mapping instruments allow designers to tune and perfect heat application along with airflows. Technologists can now define baking curves according to product development benchmarks enabling engineers to build more efficient hybrid ovens to match flexible baking profiles.

+ Borchfeld: How significant is the area of ovens for Reading Bakery Systems, and how many ovens do you sell each year?

+ Zaleski: Since we promote ourselves as a “Process System Supplier” of baked snack food products, baking and drying ovens are the centerpiece of our product line. In general, Reading sells 15 to 20 complete Process Systems per year which all include ovens and dryers. Additionally, we sell many ovens to customers who are upgrading or replacing older inefficient ovens. As demand increased several years ago, Reading opened a separate facility solely for the purpose of building ovens and dryers. We have the capability to have 6–8 fully assembled 12–15m Oven Zones on the floor at any one time. In the future, we will be building additional ovens in our factory in Tianjin, China, to serve the Asian market. The first ovens will ship out of China later this year.

+ Borchfeld: Can you say approximately how many square meters of baking surface that corresponds to?

+ Zaleski: We build anywhere from 1500 to 2000 m2 of single pass ovens, oven over dryers and multi-pass dryers.

+ Borchfeld: How would you describe the mood of your customers in the baking sector in the USA?

+ Zaleski: In the USA, our business follows the changing suppliers of snack food products. As retail contracts move from one supplier to another, one manufacturer retires an old inefficient production line, and a new supplier commissions a bigger and more efficient production line. The serviceable life of a food production line can be 20–40 years depending upon the quality of care and maintenance it’s been given. Food manufacturers look for operating efficiency, clean-ability and food safety attributes when selecting a new supplier for their processes. Reading launched our SafeShield Program a couple years ago to address our customer’s concerns. Our Safe Shield Program outlines how we design, build and commission new equipment which can meet the highest quality and food safety standards. It’s been well received by our customers.

+ Borchfeld: What does the situation look like in Russia, Europe and Asia?

+ Zaleski: In the last ten years, we been very successful in the Russian market providing new technology to produce one of their main snack food products called Sushka. Our Low Pressure Extrusion system used in the worldwide market to produce pretzels was the perfect fit with the Russian Sushka product line. Our Low Pressure Extrusion system simplified and improved the sushka process by reducing labor, increasing capacity, and producing a more consistent product. We look forward to the Modern Bakery Show coming in March 2018. In 2017, Reading opened an office which is co-located with the Tromp Group in the Netherlands. Tromp is our sister company in the Markel Food Group so we’re able to share resources. Mr. Joe Pocevicius, our European Sales Manager, looks after our European customer base on a full time basis now. In 2018, Joe and his team will be introducing Exact Continuous Mixing to the Tromp Technical Center. We will install a full Exact Mixing system so interested customers can visit the technical center and test their products to validate the continuous mixing process. This mixing system will also be displayed at IBA 2018 in Munich. Asia is a very important growth market for us, as well. In 2017, our Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Mr. David Kuipers, moved himself and his family to Singapore to more quickly respond to leads and better support customers in the Asian region. Since we already have a large installed base of equipment in select countries, it makes sense to further develop the region using our resources in our Markel Food Group Tianjin, China facility. In April 2018, we are expanding our capabilities and relocating to a new, much larger facility to support the growth of the Markel Food Group companies in this region.

+ Borchfeld: Can you tell us what kinds of projects your customers are investing in especially heavily at present?

+ Zaleski: Our customers are focused on Food Safety. New Food Safety regulations in the USA and Europe have many food manufacturers struggling to keep up with the testing protocol and documentation required to meet new codes. Our Scorpion Oven Profiling System has had a significant interest in mapping oven profiles that can easily prove and document the kill step during the baking process. Reading Thermal now offers special software that calculates these profiles automatically and generates the reports that are required by regulations.

+ Borchfeld: What sort of products/baked goods are particularly in demand nowadays, or what trends do you observe?

+ Zaleski: We see our customers exploring new formulas with various forms of grains, nuts, fruits and vegetables imbedded in traditional snack formats such as crackers, biscuits, cookies and pretzels. The drive for healthier snacks continues to be a priority for the Snack Food Industry.

Joseph Zaleski, President of Reading Bakery Systems, has a 30-year history of driving sales and growth in the baking and snack industries. As President of RBS, Joe is responsible for providing a vision for the company as it extends its presence in the global marketplace. He will continue advancing the company’s leadership role through key partnerships with industry and academia to discover, evaluate and implement new technologies. Joe, along with other members of the company, holds numerous patents for innovative designs in both food forming and baking equipment.

After serving in the United States Army, Joe joined RBS in 1990 and served as Vice President of Engineering from 1996. He was promoted to Executive Vice President in 1999 and named President in 2009. With a degree in Engineering from Penn State University, Joe has written and presented numerous technical papers at conferences within the cookie, cracker and snack industries.

+ Borchfeld: How would you describe the business situation of Reading Bakery Systems, and were you satisfied with the 2017 financial year?

+ Zaleski: 2017 for Reading was a transformational year of expanding our customer base towards a worldwide market. While our sales were good in 2017, we deployed our strategy of growth with direct representation in the Middle East African Market, European Market and Asian Market. We experienced the immediate effect of our dedicated sales and service staff in each region through the strong backlog of new customer orders in the region. While sales are good, we still have capacity available with our added manufacturing capabilities in Tianjin.

+ Borchfeld: Returning to plants, what do delivery times look like?

+ Zaleski: We pride ourselves on maintaining customer shipments at 24 to 28 weeks and the fact that we deliver on the dates promised when the customer issues the purchase order.

+ Borchfeld: What is the size of the export ratio?

+ Zaleski: We have been 50 % USA and 50 % outside of USA for the past 5 years. In the future, we expect this balance to shift more towards worldwide sales as we gain momentum in the dedicated markets.

+ Borchfeld: How have customers’ requirements changed in recent years?

+ Zaleski: Food manufacturers have had to increase the capabilities of their staff to include ingredient tracing, product tracking and safe manufacturing practices. They now have a keen interest on improving the quality and operations of any new machines they may order to reduce the risk of contamination.

+ Borchfeld: What performances and capacities do your customers require today?

+ Zaleski: We see both large suppliers interested in maximizing efficiency on a select range of products while still new aspiring entrepreneurs ramp up from commercial kitchen grade equipment to industrial product lines. We can serve the need of all ranges of food manufacturers.

+ Borchfeld: How important are the topics of controlling and cleaning?

+ Zaleski: Cleaning equipment continues to be a top improvement priority of our customers. Even in countries having low labor costs, the shut down time required to clean is more than just paying for the labor. The lost production time in periods of high demand can push manufactures to find better ways to sanitize and clean. As part of our SafeShield Program, our engineers evaluate and try to reduce the time to clean machinery.

+ Borchfeld: Service, product development and ever higher requirements on the part of customers – what is your response to these challenges?

+ Zaleski: Servicing the equipment will always be a prominent challenge to our customers. While we offer worldwide service within 24 hours, this is still not always fast enough to a customer having a breakdown during production. We stress preventative maintence and frequent training to help our customers identify potential problems before they occur. In addition, we are launching a new Customer Parts Portal on our website which provides the customer a 3D animated model of their machinery so they can request parts at any time during their day, from any location in the world, so that we can immediately respond to their parts needs.

+ Borchfeld: Could you please comment briefly again on the SCORPION ® 2 Data Logging Measurement System?

+ Zaleski: The Scorpion Data Logger is by far the most widely used tunnel oven mapping device in the food industry. Reading Thermal offers a wide range of sensors and data loggers to meet all budgets and requirements for investigative oven performance mapping. It is the only data logger measuring Temperature, Air Velocity, Heat Flux and Humidity. Knowledge gained through the use of the Scorpion product line is invaluable to the technologists, operators and maintence mechanics of industrial tunnel ovens.

+ Borchfeld: On what topic or topics will Reading Bakery Systems place its main emphasis in the next few years, and what will visitors to the iba trade fair see on your stand?

+ Zaleski: Our focus continues to be on the needs of our customers in introducing new technologies, expanding the production capabilities and developing new innovative products. To demonstrate this commitment, we will debut the latest in Exact Continuous Mixing with a bread mixer which will be placed in the Tromp Technical Center and a “game changing” drive system on our latest Wirecut machine.

+ Borchfeld: Many thanks for the interview. +++ www.buhlergroup.com/bakery

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