Puffed with pride

By Elaine Watson

- Last updated on GMT

Related tags Pie Pastry Puff pastry

Puffed with pride
There is something special about working for a family-owned business, says Neville Carruthers

Neville Carruthers, operations director (designate), Wrights Pies

I'm not a control freak, but like most managers in this line of work, I do find it hard to let go sometimes because I'm so passionate about what I'm doing.

I know the factory won't fall apart if I go on holiday, because I have confidence in the people and the systems we have put in place, but there is always that moment when you're lying on your sunbed next to the pool and you suddenly think, what's happening at work?

Likewise, when I'm signing off an invoice, I always think, how would I feel if this was my money? I also encourage my staff to think like this too because I want them to take ownership. If you don't care about what you are doing at all, how can you get any enjoyment out of your job?

There is definitely something different about working for a family-owned business like Wrights, chiefly, the lack of bureaucracy. The owners are demanding, and rightly so, but if you make a business case for new equipment or new systems, they will provide the resources (within reason!) and you can implement change right there and then. Our new spot depositors for the pasty line cost £105,000, but they paid for themselves in eight months in reduced giveaway. That's the kind of business case that people in charge of the purse strings like!

They have also been willing to bring in people such as myself from outside the business - because they recognise that you need new blood and fresh ideas if you are going to take any business to the next level. You have to think all the time, 'where is the next £10M going to come from?' When I'm interviewing someone, I'm always thinking, what new things can you bring to the table?

Because I like to be hands on, I also get involved in new product development (NPD) as well as production. This is actually very important because I have an understanding of what is possible operationally as well as what looks great in our NPD kitchen!

At the coalface

My background is in mining. I left school at 16 and moved up to the role of underground manager by the time I was 25. At 30, I was a colliery overman, but the writing was on the wall for coal mining by then, so I moved on to food. My first job was with Perkins in Stoke as a shift manager. Within 18 months I was made factory manager so I must have done something right! I did a variety of jobs after that before joining Wrights three and a half years ago.

Wrights has been trading since 1926, and they were doing very well when I joined, with two sites supplying the catering and convenience retail sector with savoury pies, pasties and sausage rolls (Crewe) and cakes, pies and other confectionery products (Stoke). But they did want to make changes. The main problems were that the cooking side was not sufficient to keep up with demand and the freezing capacity wasn't great.

There was also a fair bit of waste and giveaway. So I made a case for a new spiral freezer, which cost £1.2M, but has increased efficiency by 40%. Basically, it's reduced the time from the product coming off the production line to packing from 10 hours to 50 minutes. I was also able to say to the sales people, if you go out and bring in £7M of new business, I can handle that here with no additional labour costs at all.

We've also spent £600,000 on a state of the art cooking and cooling system from BCH that cooks and then vacuum cools hot fillings from 100°C to 8°C in 20 minutes, so we get a 2% loss of yield compared to something like 25% before. Likewise, with cold fillings you get an even distribution of solids such as chicken pieces throughout the mixture rather than 'saucy pies' where all the solids have sunk to the bottom.

The other major investment in kit has been an £800,000 pie production line. This is pretty amazing. Exactly the right amount of pastry for the base of each pie is extruded and deposited into foil trays and pressed to fit each tray before the pies are filled. A sheet of pastry is then laid over the pies as they go down the production line and the pie tops are cut out. The off cuts are then transported by conveyor and fed back into the sheeter, eliminating waste.

We've got lots of new things in the pipeline at the moment, including implementing a new £234,000 fully integrated enterprise resource planning system from SSI that is due to go live in September. This should make a big difference to the business as it covers everything from financial planning to raw materials planning and finished stock control. We're also improving our service by setting up satellite depots in Coventry and Manchester so that customers are serviced daily with fresh food that's been delivered from the factory to the depot overnight.

There is always more that you can do, although in terms of automation, we are probably there. The packing process is still largely manual, but I can't find a robot that can place 36 pies in different orientations into a catering pack!

Shifting the burden

Probably the biggest change since I arrived is the staffing. We used to start at 6am and stay until the work was done, which meant a big overtime bill, lots of agency staff and constant uncertainty over working hours. Today, everyone works set hours and we have a three shift system, five days a week: 6am-2.30pm, 2pm to 10.30pm, and 10pm-6.30am. When one shift is starting, another one is winding down. Things were initially hard for those people who were doing all the overtime, but now that it's bedded in, everyone has got used to it.

On a personal level, I have also learned to communicate in a different way. In the mining business, which is a predominantly male environment, you'd get people standing up nose to nose over something every day of the week! It's a little different in the food industry!

Not just a volume game

To make French puff pastry, we use a fully automated Fritsch laminating line. The pastry comes out as a sheet, which is split into two sheets, one raised up, another below, so that a sheet of vegetable fat can be inserted inbetween. The three layers are then reduced into a 10mm sheet, which is then folded and layered before being reduced again. At the end of the process, you have 144 layers! The filling is then added before the pasties are cut, glazed, baked or immediately frozen in the spiral freezer. They then through metal detectors before being boxed, sealed, labelled and palletised.

While managing energy, labour and raw materials costs is critical in any business, we are lucky that we are not purely in the volume game. I know everyone says that, but I know what I'm talking about because I have worked at places that are very much 'in the volume game'! We take real pride in our products here.

People local to this area are also very attached to them because we have retail outlets here with the Wrights Pies branding, so the brand is recognised.

INTERVIEW BY ELAINE WATSON

FACTORY FACTS

Location:​ Wrights Pies, Weston Road, Crewe, CW1 6XQ Tel: 01270 504 300

Products:​ savoury pies, pasties, sausage rolls

Employees:​ 360 across entire business including shops; 165 production staff at Crewe factory

Turnover:​ group: £20M (Crewe: £14M; Stoke: £6M)

Customers:​ 3663, Brakes, Virgin Rail, etc

PERSONAL

Name:​ Neville Carruthers

Age:​ 42

Career highlights:​ "Yes, it's very sad, but one of the highlights for me was seeing our products coming out of our new spiral freezer and getting packed and ready to go. It was a lot of money for the company to spend, so seeing it all go smoothly was fantastic! It was also great to become operations director (designate). It was always my ambition to become an operations director by the time I hit 45, so I've made it a bit early!"

Domestic:​ married with two children (a daughter, aged 16 and son, aged 11)

Outside work:​ a 'fair weather' golfer ... and likes watching rugby

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