Baker & Baker and the gluten-free factory

Baker and Baker, which sold its CSM ingredients arm in 2021, is a European leader in bakery convenience, with approximately 2,500 employees across 12 sites and 7 countries.

Whilst headquartered in the Wirral, Merseyside, the business also boasts a small but capable, gluten-free factory in Ashington, Sussex, which has been part of the furniture since 1999.

It’s here I operate as the factory manager, overseeing the production of circa 4-5 tonnes a day– with plenty of ambition to grow.

I joined the team in 2018 and was part of the project to get the Ashington site more financially stable.

At the time, we were manufacturing both gluten-free and gluten-included products. Within units 2 and 3 of our facilities there was duplicate equipment, but we weren’t producing significant volumes in gluten-free.

The only way to grow the gluten-free part of the business was to relinquish the gluten-included segment to our sister sites. This was because, simply put, we didn’t have enough warehousing within the gluten-free unit to hold all the key components on site. So originally, they had to be housed in a shared warehouse – and that brings risk of contamination.

Now, Ashington is a gluten-free dedicated site. It has meant we have been able to reduce the risk of cross contamination and upskill our team as we’re more ‘focused’.

Managing cross contamination

Obviously with any free-from operating site, allergen training is imperative – and we have a dedicated training department at Ashington who run training continuously. But one of the key things we do is that every employee that works on site has to complete an allergy awareness course, so they understand their impact on the consumer.

Alongside this, we also have a European-wide procurement team in place that we source products through, and a supplier assurance programme to cross check with suppliers that everything is gluten free. In this way, we’re able to safely reduce testing on site, meaning we benefit from cost-savings without introducing risk. It also gives us the security to claim gluten-free because we know no gluten including ingredients have come on site in the first place.

The Swiss Army knife of the business

Of course, the challenge of gluten-free is that the market is a lot smaller; despite this, the range of gluten-free products we make is incredibly diverse. Compared to when I first started here, when the products were very much staples. Today, in terms of offering, quality and taste, we’re light years ahead of where we were. With so many capabilities in such a small arm of business, we’re a bit like the Swiss Army knife of Baker & Baker!

Since Baker & Baker struck out on its own, the business has been investing into the brand with new equipment and capabilities. At the Ashington site, the additions have been numerous, but one of my highlights is our chocolate enrobing line, introduced two years ago.

While our headquarters have similar capabilities, what makes the Ashington enrobing line unique is that we’re able to use it on smaller items. It sounds quite simple, but with gluten-free it rarely is! Chocolate is a very dynamic product, so when it comes to coating a cake, for example, a stable base product is needed. Gluten-containing sponges are generally quite robust, whereas a gluten-free sponge is less ‘sympathetic’, making the process of coating it with chocolate evenly a rather difficult feat.  

We spent a lot of time developing that – and we’ve got new product lines we’re aiming to use that enrobing technology on in the future too.

Checking-in with the team

When it comes to running the site as plant manager, I like to be here by 6:30am. I’ve worked in the food industry for 32 years and because of that, I’ve done every shift pattern available, so it’s made me an early riser – and I like to be proactive.

Also, as this is a 24-hour site, with our night shift operating between 7pm-7am, being here earlier means I’m available for the night workers.

I generally start the day walking through the factory and checking in on as many people as possible. I see my role as a communicator, so one of the things I’ve tried to do is learn as many people’s names as possible. It’s a small thing, but it really helps to build that community spirit.

The morale here is great and that atmosphere is an important part of why people stay – in fact, 75% of the business has worked here for 5 years or more.

I think the shift pattern is also regarded favourably, it’s 12 hours, four days on, four days off. So it gives quite a lot of work-life flexibility to the team.

A lot of our recruitment is actually done through referring a friend, which I think has helped to create a positive working atmosphere as well. And we offer an incentive for recommendations.  

We also have rewards for service, offering payment for 2, 5 and 10 years – and we pop people’s pictures on the wall to highlight these achievements.

Rewards are also given for good ideas, so if any of the staff on the shop floor can offer an idea that could increase efficiency or morale for example, if we implement it, we reward it.

One of the ideas that was recently awarded was around how we approach metal detection. For this we use a variety of different sized metal detection test sticks – and that information was previously kept on various documents which weren’t near to the live, at-hand document that the team used all the time for other tasks. One member of the team suggested we consolidate that and simplify the paperwork, so it was accessible in one place.

Little things like that make huge differences.

Overall, my goal as a leader is to promote people from within and give them a career. That’s what I got for myself and that’s what I want for others. I want this to be a place you can build a career, not just a place you come to do a job. We also class ourselves as a gluten-free centre of excellence and I want to continue growing that knowledge base by retaining the talented team we have. 

The gluten-free market

As I mentioned before, the disadvantage is that gluten-free is a small market, but it is growing quite stably.

There are often fashionable trends within bakery and the wider food industry, things such as vegan, which has seen several peaks and troughs over the years. But gluten-free has proved to be a very sustainable sector, with retailers in the UK now giving a clear space on the shelf for this category – and maintaining that.

What we also noticed and wanted to address when we started out was that, previously, consumers were being shortchanged by gluten-free options.

Our range has now diversified so much, and we have also started to move into subsections of free-from, so free-from egg and/or milk in addition to gluten. This does entail quite a dramatic allergen cleaning process every six weeks, but there is a desire from retailers to build on the free-from offering in several ways.