Setting up production in Glen Innes is the start of Chapter Two for Smartfoods. John Winters reports.
LEASING THE old Nice and Natural factory in Farmhouse Lane in Auckland’s Glen Innes
marks two significant events for Smartfoods, licencee in New Zealand of the Vogels brand in all categories except for bread.
It not only marks a move by the company into taking over responsibility for much of the manufacturing of the products it sells and markets in this country, but it’s also a return “home” for the Vogels brand.
For, prior to the time that Allen Peters and his family acquired the site for confectionery manufacturing and – eventually – the successful Nice and Natural brand bought by Griffin’s Foods, it was the home of the Klisser Bakery.
In fact, the plant was first built by Hans Klisser and it was the site where Vogels bread was first baked in this country.
Of course, the Vogels bread brand is now licensed here by Goodman Fielder and the Klisser Bakery was eventually sold to Griffin’s Foods – the first time that the company bought a business operating on the site.
Now the manufacturing buildings and a smaller building which Nice and Natural used as its research lab after originally having used it for offices, have been taken over by Smartfoods.
Both Justin Hall and wife, Vicky, who has joined him in the business, are hoping that the success of the first two companies will rub off on their own operation.
“The challenge is there for us to find our niche to be successful,” said Vicky.
Manufacturing plan
Smartfoods was based in Penrose, from where it carried out all its sales and marketing operation, with manufacturing in the hands of a contract manufacturer.
Now the plan, once the factory is commissioned next month, is for most of that manufacturing to be carried out in Farmhouse Lane.
With the move to Glen Innes it really is the start of the second chapter in the company’s life and, as Justin admits, will provide more flexibility and the opportunity to move quickly into other categories with the Vogels brand as and when he and his team feel the time and the product opportunity is right.
It will also allow Smartfoods to look at other possibilities beyond just the manufacture of Vogels.
Since moving into the buildings vacated by Allen Peters, there have been some minor internal structural alterations and they have had a facelift.
And in the last few weeks equipment has been shipped in from overseas and commissioned ready for manufacturing to begin.
The biggest single machine to be installed has been a 25m tunnel oven divided into two zones. The oven has been imported from the US and was set up by a team of American engineers.
Product will pass through the oven on a steel conveyor belt made in Austria.
Beside it is a Propak machine made in Australia. It is a form-fill and seal machine with a ziplock capability as well as a whole range of different packing formats.
The tunnel oven will be used for the Vogels breakfast cereal range and for the Vogels Pita Crisps.
“It will also give us the facility for anything that comes along later,” said Justin, “anything that is baked.
“But there will still be some products we outsource as we don’t have a bar-making line. We can do all our cereals in here and whatever else we decide to do that will fit the equipment we have.
Chapter Two
“This is now the beginning of Chapter Two for us and we are formulating a bit of a strategic plan at the moment looking at what some of the new product ranges will look like given the manufacturing capability we will have and the competence we have developed around healthy food.”
Given the larger facility Smartfoods now has, there has been the recruitment of additional staff in sales and marketing, as well as production, bringing total employee numbers up to 16.
“We transferred to a new sales team at the beginning of October, moving from Crossmark to Primary Saleslink,” Justin continued.
Smartfoods has also utilised an Enterprise IT solution which backs up financials and MRP for the production site.
“We have done all this in the last five months and some companies would only do one of these in a year,” Justin continued.
“One of the things that has made it an easier transition for us is that this site becoming available was a Godsend. We had been looking for a food grade site for some time that we could move into with some modernisation required that had a
good pedigree, rather than going into a greenfield site.
“That has helped us get from a standing start to be up and running quite quickly.”
