Apetito have once again partnered with Dataprocess Stevens upgrading their 290RFS Recipe Formulation System which was installed by Dataprocess Stevens 15 years ago. The system has continuously provided them with the traceability needed to adhere to ever-changing legislation. However, the temptation of the modern Vantage was too great!

At the same time as undergoing a major refurbishment of part of the factory, Apetito decided it was the right time to upgrade the 290RFS system to the new Vantage system designed by Dataprocess Stevens. This was completed in order to ensure that the company could be confident of it’s continued reputation for consistency and 100% traceability in an increasingly competitive and legislated environment.

Award-winning Apetito are one of Europe’s leading suppliers of quality frozen food and catering solutions. The Apetito group, with its’ Head Office in Rheine, Germany operate across Europe, specifically in Germany, The Netherlands, France, the UK and Canada, with the UK Head Office being in Trowbridge, Wiltshire.

In the UK, Apetito’s key market is the public sector, where they supply Healthcare facilities, Local Authorities, Education and most recently have moved into the Care Homes sector. Apetito also operate the highly successful Wiltshire Farm Foods franchise business, which has over 60 outlets nationwide supplying quality frozen meals.

Producing over 700,000 meals per week, 705,000 pies/pasties and 400,000 desserts, the importance of traceability of those food ingredients is paramount to Apetito’s operational success.

Apetito’s product range provides a wide variety of nutritionally-balanced meals suitable for many different palettes and diet requirements including diabetics, low-salt and/or low-fat diets, vegetarians, milk, egg and gluten free meals and even meals specifically for those requiring a soft or pureed diet. Ethnic preferences are also considered in the kosher and halal dishes. The appetising meal options range from a traditional English Sunday roast to European dishes such as the Hungarian goulash and mouth-watering desserts of sticky toffee pudding or plum crumble with custard to name just two.

The newly installed Vantage system provides Recipe Control by enabling the Production Manager to schedule the daily requirements for the recipe batches on the PC in advance. The batch requirements are then displayed on the Vantage Touch Screen display to enable the Operators to select from the list of requirements without the use of a paper production schedule.

Once selected, the recipe is pulled from the main database and the Operator is prompted through the recipe formulation process one ingredient at a time, ensuring that the weighing tolerances are met and no over or under weighing occurrences can spoil a batch, which can be a costly mistake.

At the same time as enforcing a strict weighing tolerance, the Lot Numbers of each of the raw ingredients are recorded on the system to once again remove paperwork associated with stock traceability and provide a comprehensive audit trail should the need to recall a product or investigate a specific contaminated ingredient take place.

All of the Recipe Data is stored centrally on a Management Server with plans in the near future to integrate with the company’s SAP MRP System providing seamless traceability.

Claire Tollit, Quality Manager at Apetito comments “Stevens have had a relationship with Apetito for over 25 years and this upgrade to the latest Vantage technology is the proof in the pudding of their attitude towards their customers.

The Vantage delivers our traceability for the hand scaling areas and we also use the Stevens In-Line Checkweighers in our Plant, in addition to all our general weighing and calibration requirements. All in all, we’re very pleased and we recommend them to anybody looking for improved recipe control and checkweighing.”

UK Sales Manager Toby Hawkins comments “We were delighted to find out that we’d been selected to upgrade Apetito to the next generation of Recipe Control Systems. We regard Apetito, like all of our customers, as a long term and mutually beneficial partnership and we’re delighted to work with them! The ready meals market has always been of primary focus to Stevens and we have a long list of clients within the sector and our experience goes a long way with them. Apetito are fast becoming a world wide organisation and this compliments our new worldwide structure too. We look forward to the future!”