Competitive meal delivery with a conscience

Producing 3000 meals a day and 850,000 meals a year when around 80% of your workers have a disability is truly an achievement of which to be proud.

This is the scenario at Flagstaff’s Fine Food Division, which has numerous Meals on Wheels contracts, two retail outlets and individual customers from around its central location near Wollongong, NSW; its site in Nowra, on NSW’s south coast; and further afield.

All the meals are prepared fresh then snap frozen. Two freezer trucks and one freezer van are on the road five days a week, delivering to customers as far away as southern Queensland, Canberra and Dubbo.

The Flagstaff Group is a social enterprise with a primary purpose “to enhance the lives of people with disabilities by building skills and capabilities that facilitate independence through choice of authentic and meaningful employment in a sustainable business environment”.

In addition to its food division, which also operates a training cafe, it runs businesses that include laundry services, recycling, packaging and assembly, document scanning, coffee roasting, glove recycling and rural fencing. Across the entire group of around 370 employees, 80% have a disability and receive the Disability Support Pension.

With Flagstaff required to compete commercially, Flagstaff Group Sales and Marketing Communications Manager Karen Burdett said that ways to increase productivity are always being considered, but not at the expense of eliminating jobs.

Automated packaging

“To this end, around four years ago our Fine Food Division made the decision to add some automation in the meals production area. As this division employs 60 people, 53 of whom have a disability, we needed to make sure that the machinery we installed was easy to operate,” Burdett said.

“We transitioned from our old packaging method of aluminium trays with cardboard lids to a Confoil automated heat sealing machine, which provided many benefits for our customers.”

Two Oliver 1808 sealing machines were installed and Flagstaff decided to use Confoil’s Dualpak trays, which are made from pulp paperboard with a polyester film lining that provides a liquid-proof barrier. The machines apply the lidding from continuous film rolls.

Flagstaff opted for the 360 and 500 g trays with dual cavities so that the protein and vegetable components can be separated.

Many benefits

“Back then, our Meals on Wheels clients almost comprised our total customer base and they were especially appreciative of this packaging change. Now we have many individuals who use our nutritionally balanced meals for convenience and everyone can take advantage of the packaging benefits.”

These benefits include:

• Tamper-evident lids for greater food quality and safety.
• Lidding that is easy to open, thanks in part to the large film overhang.
• The ability to take trays from the freezer to the microwave and conventional oven.
• The meal can be seen through the clear lid.
• Better heat retention, yet the trays can be comfortably handled when hot.
• The tray and film lidding can be recycled, which is an important factor for environmentally conscious Flagstaff.

“While we recommend plating the meal for a more enjoyable experience, we are fully aware that a lot of consumers eat straight from the tray, which is not unattractive. Being able to microwave the meal is one of the biggest benefits for our older consumers as it is much safer than using an oven or stovetop.

“In terms of food quality, the film lidding enables all the steam to be kept in and retained in the heating process. This is really important in making sure the meal reaches the appropriate temperature, retains its moisture and doesn’t leak during the heating process.”

Simplicity and ease of use

A key reason for Flagstaff choosing Confoil’s Oliver system was because of the simplicity of using the machine.

“We need to have a machine that is easy to operate and allows us to train our employees quickly. Quite a few of our employees only work one or two days a week so it has to be intuitive, and many have a mix of skills, which allows us to ensure we always have sufficient people in the production area to operate the machine,” Burdett said.

Last year Flagstaff took advantage of the ability to customise the trays with its own logo and design, which allowed it to promote its brand on the packaging.

“It’s good for us to be able to promote Flagstaff Fine Foods through our logo and reinforce our brand to customers and consumers of our meals. Confoil arranged this without any fuss and it was completed very efficiently.”

The two Oliver sealing machines are located within the production kitchen. After the meals are prepared, staff manually portion the trays and they are placed onto the machine’s tray carriage for the lidding and sealing process. The sealed meals are then manually placed into racks for snap-freezing and dispatch.

The Oliver 1808 is capable of processing 27 trays/minute or 800 meals/day with the output variable according to the settings and speed of the machine.

“Since we’ve been using the Oliver system, we have greatly improved productivity, which has resulted in reduced overheads and helped make us more competitive. Savings are also made through using a tray with dual cavities as this provides us with better portion control and reduced wastage. It’s just so simple now and extremely efficient,” Burdett added