Chicken with added flavour

Challenger has just benefited from a £2.5m refurbishment, carried out in conjunction with JDI Projects. The work is set to take the company on to the next stage of its development. Challenger, owned by Scottish chicken producer Mitchells since January 2002, has in recent years undergone a complete transformation and now boasts a turnover of around £20m.

The company, which employs around 150 factory staff, originally processed whole birds. But, recognising the stiff competition and poor returns inherent in this oversupplied sector, it made the strategic decision to exit this business completely and move into the niche area of supplying marinated chicken portions.

So far it has proved to be the right decision and business appears to be booming, with potential new customers knocking on its doors almost daily. "We are a niche manufacturer," says Gilroy. "Ninety different types of flavoured chicken portions are made every week."

Challenger produces a wide variety of chicken formats: from breasts and wings, to chicken which has been shredded, torn, sliced or diced, and then marinated with bespoke recipes to meet different requirements.

In Gilroy's words the firm offers "a fascinating range of flavours" - many inspired by its own new product development team. One of the more recent innovations is a novel Indian style chicken.

While the lion's share of Challenger's business (90%) is in chicken, it also has its business eye on a more diverse market and is now handling other protein, including turkey and duck, lamb and beef.

"A one-stop shop for cooked meats is what we want to be," says Challenger's sales director Ron Dryburgh. "The big growth area is added value and salads." Proof of the company's ambitious growth plans are demonstrated by a Halal audit that was scheduled to take place last month.

Vacuum tumbling

Challenger uses infusion marinating techniques rather than cheaper dry glazes, before cooking which, according to the company, generates a better flavoured product. The company supplies products to manufacturers and retailers for use in salads, sandwiches, wraps and for pizza toppings among other applications.

Vacuum tumbling is used to get marinade thoroughly into the interstices of muscle, which relaxes under the vacuum and then contracts as it is released. Challenger has seven 2t tumblers which are used to either marinate or defrost product - from -18°C to chilled in 7h. "We do not inject brine into any product, whereas a lot of manufacturers do," claims technical controller Darren Gedge.

After marinating, the chicken is either roasted, grilled/ flame seared on travelling ovens or steamed, which gives a more moist product, and then quickly chilled or individually quick frozen, ready for despatch. Some chilled product is packaged in bags flushed with a combination of nitrogen and carbon dioxide to provide extended life. Batches range from 200kg up to 10t in size, with the average being around 600kg, says Gilroy.

Thanks to the new blast chilling facilities, the factory's capacity has been doubled to 250t a week. Individual loads can be quickly chilled from 85°C down to 2°C in around 70 minutes. Three nitrogen tunnels are also available for chilling and freezing product as required.

Gilroy says that installation of the blast chiller caused him the biggest headache among all the work carried out. Because Challenger is a batch processor "I needed flexibility and I wanted a mega amount of cold air", he says. But he also needed a fully automated system and one that could be easily cleaned. "Designing a system around that was extremely complicated," he added. "We are chilling faster than anyone in that room."

"The chilled area is growing like crazy," says Gilroy. He attributes this partly to insufficient defrosting capacity within some companies that Challenger serves. And, consequently, this is seen as a business opportunity. Part of the service that Challenger promotes is its ability to respond to top up orders the same day.

Depending on its customers' specifications, Challenger sources its chicken from both Brazil and Europe - which includes the UK. The texture of chicken sourced in Europe is quite different to that from countries such as Thailand, for example, where it tends to come from younger birds. However, because Thailand can afford to use more manual processing, there is usually less bone remaining in Thai chicken, than that from Europe, which tends to uses automatic deboning.

Because of concerns expressed in some quarters about the growth of chicken imports from the Far East and elsewhere, Dryburgh says: "We are looking to stage a comeback and bring the UK/EU [European Union] product back."

Challenger's expansion has been designed to accommodate its successful growth. A number of big UK players in own-label manufacture and most of the major sandwich producers are now talking with the company about supplying their needs.

Gilroy is particularly proud of Challenger's use of the very latest hygiene and quality control procedures at its plant, which is accredited to EFSIS higher level.

These include, for example, 20 air changes per hour through modern chilled air handling units, which pass through a two micron prefilter and a final stage 0.6 micron hepa filter in high risk areas; antimicrobial floor surfaces against Listeria, Salmonella, E.coli and Staphylococcus; and CCTV cameras which provide a record of shift activities.

There is also a separate equipment and cooking rack cleaning room, which has been built to avoid any possibility of airborne contamination within high risk areas. "Bacteria control in this business now is nothing short of phenomenal," claims Gilroy.

The company operates a three-shift system, which comprises an early (6am to 2pm) and late shift (2pm to 10pm) followed by a night hygiene shift (10pm to 6am) which has dedicated high and low-risk area cleaning teams.

The night hygiene teams include staff who are skilled in production to ensure that everything is ready for work to start as soon as the morning shift arrives.

Process investment

"We were bulging at the seams, so increasing capacity was a big driver," admits Gilroy. Investment has also taken place with new process equipment, including £200,000 in the new tumbling machines, which are used to marinate and defrost imported frozen chicken.

Gedge, who has only recently joined the Challenger team, adds: "The factory was old and tired and need upgrading." That problem has clearly been addressed with the latest factory refurbishment, with new walls, ceilings and drains. Construction of a 400 pallet frozen store has also enabled the company to save costs by doing away with off-site storage.

"This investment has allowed us to attract the biggest clientele out there," says Gedge.

"We go into the new year with a clean sheet," adds Gilroy. "A new factory and a major refurbishment in the old factory." FM

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