The Original Cakerie

The Original Cakerie

Overview

  • When the largest privately owned dessert manufacturer in Canada reached capacity in its Delta, British Columbia plant, it looked east to Ontario, at the heart of the North American market.  

Project Highlights

  • To facilitate the shipping of frozen decorated cakes, this 130,000 SF facility had a Variable Retention Time (VRT) freezer, the largest of its kind at the time, with 1000’ of conveyer in eight different cells at -10˚F.
  • Thanks to close coordination, the project was completed in 11 months from groundbreaking to saleable product, despite a winter with unusually high snow falls.
  • It received a gold rating from the American Institute of Baking (AIB) due to sanitary design practices that exceeded AIB and GMP standards, and production rates were higher than expected immediately upon start-up.

 

 

Heinz

HEINZ

Overview

  • HJ Heinz European Frozen and Chilled Foods invested $9 MM to establish a strategic headquarters in Dublin and expand its frozen ready-meals production facility.

Project Highlights

  • Dennis Group provided facility and process design-build services for the expansion of an Heinz’s existing facility located in Dundalk, Ireland. The facility design included renovation of 5,000 m2 of internal production space and the construction of 3,000 m2 of new food manufacturing and utility areas.
  • This project involved the installation of two high-speed fully automated frozen-ready meal production lines.
  • A state of the art sauce manufacturing system utilizing vacuum cooling and a flexible batch management and control system supported the production lines.
  • Additional process equipment included pasta blanching, high shear slurry blending, and potato and fish handling.
  • Installation of completely new utility systems and a wastewater treatment plant was also incorporated into the project.

 

Baskin Robbins

BASKIN ROBBINS

Overview

  • Dennis Group provided consulting services for the development of a greenfield site in Osaka, Japan for Baskin Robbins.

Project Highlights

  •  The project consisted of a new ice cream production facility for producing 3 gallon (13.6 L) bulk containers and novelty ice cream cakes for this global manufacturer of ice cream products.
  • Dennis Group provided site, facility, process, and packaging development in order to generate a cost estimate for capital approval.
  • The project required collaboration with the client’s local consulting engineers for process and facility designs. Development of a final cost estimate required an extensive value engineering phase in order to deliver the preliminary project plan at desired capital level.

Bakery Facility

CONFIDENTIAL

Overview

  • A new greenfield facility was built on a 35-acre site to produce a popular line of frozen baked goods. 

Project Highlights

  • Speed-to-market was key to meet growing consumer demand, and this fast-track project which included a 188,000 SF bread bakery, automated sandwich assembly and packaging line, went from site design to commissioning in under 12 months.
  • The campus encompassed a 20,000 SF finished goods storage freezer, refrigerated shipping docks and 18,000 SF of office space.
  • Future expansion needs played a role in both the building design and the utility system sizing, and subsequent projects executed by Dennis Group have enlarged the footprint to 320,000 SF.

 

 

Dreyer’s

DREYER’S

Overview

  • Shortly after the merger between Nestlé and Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream, the decision was made to consolidate manufacturing and distribution functions at the Operations Center located in Bakersfield, CA.

Project Highlights

  • This expansion consisted of adding over 320,000 square feet of processing, utility, warehouse/distribution, and R&D space, including six new production lines.
  • In addition to three conventional ice cream mix production tanks, the facility includes a yogurt production room. This space is pressurized to preclude infiltration of airborne contaminants. 3000 gallon batches of cream are inoculated with live yogurt cultures to produce the base yogurt mix. The mix is batch pasteurized, then pumped to surge tanks for addition of flavors, prior to freezing, hardening and packaging.
  • Once the expansion was completed, in fewer than 12 months from groundbreaking to saleable product, Dreyer’s manufacturing throughput was doubled.

 

Dreyer’s

DREYER’S

Overview

  •  When Dreyer’s combined its ice cream business with that of Nestlé’s, expansion of East Coast manufacturing and distribution capacity was one of the highest priorities in rationalizing the merger. Dennis Group was selected as a partner for the evaluation and execution of this major facility and process expansion project.

Project Highlights

  • The project involved acquiring and re-zoning 40 acres of property, increasing the size of the facility six fold to over 600,000 SF, creating a 23,000 pallet minus 20 degree distribution center, and adding 10 new ice cream and frozen yogurt lines.
  • This major undertaking was affected over a two year construction period, and was accomplished without sacrificing a single minute of the existing facility’s available capacity.