As you may already know I was first employed by food machinery company over 20years ago and I have seen a lot of change in that time. April 2019 we completed an MBO and as such I am now the companies Managing Director. Joining me in the MBO are Samit Basak whom has been with Food Machinery for over 6years, he will become our Technical Director and Ross Thorne who will be our Operation Director. Many of you already know Samit as our Engineering / Service Manager and Ross has been known to the company for some years has joined us as part of an Acquisition of his Company Saga Automation. The acquisition of Saga Automation has allowed us to start offering further automation including Robots for direct food contact and end of line packing. Contact us for more information. Webpage about this coming soon. I would like to thank you all for your support and custom to date and look forward to working with you in my new role.

Suppliers of Food Processing, Packaging Machinery and flexible packaging.10 years ago when I bought into the company we had a turn over of just over £800,000, 2018 we managed £3.4mil. 12-20% growth year on year.We have also moved out of portacabins Into our all new purpose built offices and development centre. Made possible by a successful application for a 50% interest free loan via the Tiger gateway.We were finalist in the Medway business awards, Medway trade awards, PPMA awards among other nominations and we are one of the proud sponsors of the national young butcher competition.

FMC Packaging has been set up to further expand upon the packaging sales previously handled by The Food Machinery co. Same assurance of compatibility with our machinery across the FMC group.

Sipro Automation and Robotics has become part of the FMC group.

The BIO-BOARD project will build on past research that has revealed that whey protein coating can provide bio-degradable plastic layers that can replace existing plastic coatings in multilayer packaging and enhance their recyclability –by separating the individual fractions of the multilayer packaging. To this end, a tailored coating system based on the renewable raw material derived from agrofood waste and its technological application will be developed for extrusion coating paper, paperboard and cardboard to produce packaging materials. The base material for the coating will be innovative formulations based on proteins such as whey and residues from potato. Indeed, as a by-product coming from cheese production, still 40-50% of the 50 million tons of whey produced annually in Europe is discarded, while about 65,000 tons of dried fruit juice protein and 140,000 tons of dried potato pulp are produced during starch production annually within the EU which could be available for new valorisations.

The MILD-DRY project will deliver a novel variable frequency microwave-assisted vacuum drying system by combining the benefits of both microwave and vacuum drying methods. Microwave vacuum-drying (MWVD) will reduce the drying time of the conventional vacuum drying process by at least 40%, resulting in lower energy and running costs, increased product throughput, preservation of the nutritional value and improved quality of heat sensitive dried foods compared to conventional drying methods. It will also design and build a prototype with a validated effectiveness in real commercial food drying facilities. This technology will be affordable, robust and easy to maintain. The treated food will be analysed to ensure its safety and to assess its quality and shelf-life. The MILD-DRY project will build on the positive results of laboratory trails using microwave-assisted vacuum drying (MWVD) for the successful dehydration of grapes, cranberries, bananas, tomatoes, carrots, garlic, kiwifruit, apple and pear, whereby the drying time for car rots for example was reduced to 2 h compared with 4.5-8.5 h in convectional hot air drying. Moreover, dried carrots showed higher rehydration potential, higher beta-carotene and vitamin C contents, lower density, and softer texture than those prepared by air drying. In order to bridge the gap between laboratory research and industrial application, the MILD-DRY project will develop a prototype system for its validation in commercial food drying facilities, and will deliver a model that relates electrical, thermal and physical properties of the selected foods that are dried under vacuum. The system design will focus on positive economic returns, considering the start-up and maintenance costs, electricity use, ease of operation, and added value to the final products.

The COOLMEAT project will design and develop a prototype immersion vacuum cooling (IVC) system for rapidly cooling cooked meats. The project will build upon research indicating that IVC can reduce the loss of tenderness and juiciness in meat that is normally associated with vacuum cooling.

My first major change was the Name we went from Hyppocampus to the Cutlery Polisher company, Shortly after we changed the supply of our machines to Nicem who let us help change the machine to make it work better for our clients.With the right product and supporting media I Started to market the product at all of the major trade shows.Having generated a massive interest in the product with Free Trials the business simply snowballed taking on clients such as; Whitbread, Mitchells and Butler, J D Wetherspoons, Accor, Hilton, De Vere, Jurys, Holiday Inn, Best Western, MacDonnalds Hotels, Nandos, TGIs, Aroma plenty of competitors started to appear but none of them had the prodcut right. THE SECRETS IN THE GRAIN!

Stangard specialise in Projects, complete turnkey solutions for kitchens and foodservice areas.I started to grow the one off sales within the business by building a CRM and improving the dated filling system I made it easy to prodcue a quotation for single items as well as making it easy for the project managers to get prices for lesser sold item.I also made huge improvements to the production of Opperation and Maintenance manuals saving everyone a lot of time.

Having Spent a year in the kitchens i got the oppertunity to work for a machinery company in there trial kitchen helping food manufacturers develope new products and improve the production of there current products.My first Major project saw me based in Annan working on a Chinese food project for M&S trying to make traditional Products such as Pau and ShuMai without Salt, MSG and other additives and without manual labour.I kept the trial kitchen ready for action and filled my spare time learning as much as possible about the Engineering behind the machines.

I wanted to be a Chef when i left school and after a year of not getting the training i was promissed I decided that i needed to look for a role with more potential.