Page 17 - Food&Drink Business magazine October 2022

and export standards, ensuring that any growth opportunity realises food safety, product quality, and output goals.
PRELIMINARY REVIEW
Initial engagement with a client usually starts with a Preliminary Design review. Before looking at any expansion costs, there is a thorough review of the complete manufacturing process.
Typically, a simple mass balance or material flow analysis of the existing production facility is conducted to gain a greater understanding of how best to optimise the facility footprint and improve processing capabilities.
This exercise is also beneficial in identifying and minimising waste, leading to cost saving opportunities and gaining a better insight of the actual capital expansion requirements.
The findings of this Preliminary Design review drive out the staged expansion options for an optimal growth strategy.
Where necessary, appropriate building, fit out, and utilities companies are recommended for any expansion works, because we believe in staying in our lane; we are experts in process.
We partner with other relevant industry specialists to ensure the best level of service and protect the valuable relationships we have with our clients and suppliers.
CLIENT CASE STUDIES
PDP Fine Foods is the manufacturing company behind the Wicked Sister dessert brand. They are also one of our most valued and long-standing clients and a great example of continuing scaled growth.
RMR Process started collaborating with PDP on a brownfield site in 2016, when an existing warehouse was converted into a dairy desserts factory at Ingleburn in Sydney’s outer west.
The upgrade saw the existing production of 4.5 tonnes of premium desserts per day with 35 employees across two shifts, grow to 16 tonnes in one shift with less than 20 employees.
As sales have increased, RMR Process has continued to incrementally scale PDP’s production capability by increasing the level of
automation, as well as installing higher throughput process and packaging equipment.
This has enabled PDP to develop additional product formats and take advantage of new market opportunities.
Most recently, Victorian bakery snack manufacturer, Springhill Farm has successfully adopted our model. As an agile manufacturer, Springhill’s expansion needs
private equity investment firm Queens Lane Capital (QLC), who engaged RMR Process to conduct a peer review of an upcoming brownfield project.
Our team optimised the proposed layout to fit the initial equipment requirements and protect enough real estate to ensure the site could grow into the future and significantly expand production capacity when required.
of food industry experts just as passionate as we are about providing manufacturers with a high level of industry expertise.
This network includes builders, town planners, architects, food safety and quality specialists, as well as connections with state and federal government departments for industry funding opportunities.
Ultimately the more you
“ Never have we seen such an opportunity for Australian made products to succeed both at home and abroad, with the increasing domestic and global opportunities that currently exist for Australian food manufacturers.”
revolved around maintaining market continuity while being able to increase its SKU range with the addition of a new processing line.
RMR Process was engaged to design their current infrastructure upgrades and give the company a future capital works staging plan.
Ensuring the uninterrupted operation of existing lines was crucial for Springhill. RMR Process mapped out and remodelled their existing plant layout to enable a staged fit out and utility upgrade that could be carried out in isolation from the existing process lines, avoiding operational disruption.
The growth being experienced by manufacturers like Springhill Farm and PDP Fine Foods ref lects the increasing trend we are seeing for Australian made goods across the sector to support brands’ provenance stories.
NEW PLAYERS
The food and beverage industry is also witnessing an increasing presence of private equity investment in the sector.
We find ourselves working more and more on both sides of the equation, helping manufacturers ‘scale for sale’ and helping investment firms leverage into the industry.
These investors see significant growth potential in the value of Australian food and beverage products, for example, companies like Australian
TIME FOR CHANGE
Never have we seen such an opportunity for Australian made products to succeed both at home and abroad, with the increasing domestic and global opportunities that currently exist for Australian food manufacturers. This makes our mission to keep food manufacturing alive in Australia even more relevant today than ever before.
We’ve built a great network
Springhill Farm’s new facility and process upgrade. (See p28 for full story on Springhill Farm.)
spend on your factory, the more pressure you put on your manufacturing costs and therefore on the cost of your products.
Our scaling model gives manufacturers the ability to break their project into bite sized chunks, enabling clients to minimise debt and equity funding by strategically scaling growth, in a way that can be funded by cash flow, as capability and sales increase. ✷
COVER STORY
www.foodanddrinkbusiness.com.au | October 2022 | Food&Drink business | 17