Star quality

Cees van der Star, factory general manager, Unilever Ice Cream, Gloucester

I call myself the new nomad. I've worked for Unilever for 23 years, but only three of them were in my own country [the Netherlands]. The rest of the time I've been travelling all over Europe, which makes life very interesting. It also means you have to learn new languages, which can be very time-consuming when you are just starting a new job and working very long hours. Germany was particularly hard as the dialects are completely different in different regions!

My first job with Unilever was in the R&D facility at Colworth, UK, where I got involved with some really exciting technology like injection moulding. My next move was into process engineering at Vlaardingen in the Netherlands, where I was concentrating on detergents, which was also very exciting as we were at the cutting edge of technologies in this area.

After that, I went to Langnese Iglo [Unilever subsidiary] in Germany, where I worked as a special project engineer in the technical department - my second encounter with ice cream, before being poached to become factory manager at the margarine factory in Mannheim.

Then it was back to ice cream again when I moved to Spain and became technical director at Frigo, another Unilever company. That was a great experience, but when the opportunity came to run the site here in Gloucester in April 2004, I couldn't turn it down. It's one of the major food production sites in Europe.

Turnaround

It was tough when I arrived. The site had been through a painful restructuring in 2002/3, which I was well aware of as I was part of the European supply chain group. They had taken a third out of the cost base and even more than a third of the people had been made redundant. It saved the site, but people were very de-motivated; they were just plodding on.

Output was poor and it was not really an internationally focused business. It felt like an English factory that did some export rather than a European factory with a European supply chain that happened to have some very big customers in the UK. I needed to change the mindset, but you can't just march in there and do that in the first week. You have to gain people's trust; it's about winning hearts and minds. I was lucky as it was results time when I arrived and I could address everyone on site and tell people exactly what was going on. I told them three things that I liked and three things that I didn't like. Later I used factory conferences to convey the new strategic direction.

When I arrived, I'd say we were at the very bottom of the pile in terms of performance. Today, I'd say we are near the top. We are competitive in many ways. In the first place I look at cost, quality and service. These are followed by flexibility, innovation and speed.

Costs wise, if the industry is competing with factories in Poland at half the salary level, you have to produce twice as much per man hour. It's as simple as that. Especially when you're competing with own-label suppliers, you have to use scale.

Two years ago, we installed a line enabling us to make a million tubs in one week. That's a lot of ice cream. We make some products like Viennetta for the whole of Europe. Cornetto is a great example of how we've turned things round. We've reduced the conversion costs, we make our own sauces and now we're doing four times the amount we were when we took over production three years ago.

It's a testament to our success that we're planning a major expansion of the site and will be actively recruiting staff for the first time in years. In two years' time, we will be making substantially more product than we do today from this site, with a new production line coming on-stream in November that will bring another 60-80M pieces to the factory and significant expansion of several other lines including Cornetto. By the end of the year, we will have increased our Cornetto capacity by 70%.

Since I arrived, efficiency has improved by eight to 10 percentage points, we've halved the waste and the culture has completely changed.

A key part of the transformation has been total productive maintenance (TPM). This is all about preventing problems that could affect efficiency before they occur and maximising equipment effectiveness. But it's also been a key part of the cultural change because it's about involving everyone that uses or maintains equipment, which makes them take ownership and raises productivity.

Instead of dedicated engineers who come in and fix problems, our operators are trained to clean, inspect and lubricate their own equipment, to visit suppliers and plan the cleaning schedules and so on. Our staff is highly flexible, highly skilled and highly motivated. It's key to being competitive. It's also critical when there is a shortage of skilled people in the market.

But there's always more we could do. For example, I would like to have better information systems on the factory floor, more direct involvement of my operators for materials control and quality control.

To make ice cream, you mix the ingredients, pasteurise it, homogenise it, and age it in tanks. Then it goes to the heat exchangers on the lines to cool and aerate it, at which point you can add other ingredients like fruits. At this stage, when ice cream is at around -5°C or -7°C, it tastes incredibly creamy! We also do cold extrusion at -14°C to -15°C for some products, which gives an even creamier texture.

After that, different technologies kick in depending on the product. If you make a Cornetto, you use in-line filling technology to fill the cones from the bottom up. For Viennetta, you have to extrude horizontally. For Magnum or Solero you use vertical extrusion. The lower you can get for an extrusion temperature, say at -7°C rather than -5°C, the smoother texture you can get. But there are also tricks and techniques in the recipe, in the pasteurisation process and elsewhere that can help you get a smoother, creamier mouthfeel.

Rain, rain, go away ...

Forecasting is one of the most difficult aspects of running an ice cream business, as ice cream is heavily promoted and highly weather dependent. It's that constant balance of keeping your customers satisfied and not tying up too much working capital in stock. It's also difficult because all the markets we supply behave differently.

The UK sells more take-home ice cream, which is less weather dependent, but highly promoted, for example. Some lines are also more weather-dependent than others. Managing staffing levels can also be an issue. If there is the same volume produced in the year, but volatility in terms of when, reducing agency staff levels by introducing annualised hours for permanent staff make sense. But if the volumes are very volatile full stop, as in our business, that doesn't work.

In April, a couple of products were selling five times the forecast, and it's very difficult to maintain customer service when that happens. You also don't want to be left with a load of excess product at the end of the summer because everything changes. About 30% of the range we do every year can be new, so managing stock levels to the end of the season is critical.

There are long range forecasters out there that claim they can predict when the hot weather will start or end next season or next year, but they are always wrong!

It makes me laugh when we get a sudden hot weekend because the local radio is always on the phone, asking if we are prepared. If you only start making more ice cream when the sun comes out, you're far too late!

INTERVIEW BY ELAINE WATSON

FACTORY FACTS

Location:​ Unilever Ice Cream, Phoenix factory, Corinium Avenue, Barnwood, Gloucester, GL4 3BW. Tel: 01452 392 000

Site history:​ "The Cotswolds factory was built on the site in 1959, followed by this site - the Phoenix factory - in the early 1980s. About five years ago we closed the Cotswolds site and concentrated everything here."

Employees:​ "Because of automation, staff numbers have dropped from almost 2,000 20 years ago to less than 500 now."

Output:​ 1bn ice creams a year

Products:​ Magnum, Solero, Cornetto, Viennetta, Carte d'Or, Calippo, Twister, Mini Milk, Feast, Wall's Soft Scoop products and lines for other markets

PERSONAL

Name:​ Cees van der Star

Age:​ 50

Career highlights:​ "The development of Cornetto Soft, a novel business system to sell soft ice cream to consumers, during my stay in Spain."

Domestics:​ Married with two children

Outside work:​ "Jogging, tennis, chauffeuring my children around ... and I'm learning to play golf. It's got to be done if you move to the UK! I'm not brilliant, but considering the amount of time I have to devote to it, I'm actually not that bad!"