An $8 million upgrade to Peters & Brownes Group’s Balcatta production facility is already paying dividends for the group, helping the dairy giant secure a major deal to supply super premium ice-cream to Japan.
An $8 million upgrade to Peters & Brownes Group’s Balcatta production facility is already paying dividends for the group, helping the dairy giant secure a major deal to supply super premium ice-cream to Japan.
The $7 million deal, which took six months to finalise, includes the delivery of 14 million ice-cream cups over a 12-month period to the Japanese market, where Peters & Brownes had had significant success in the past.
The upgrade, dubbed Project Alpha, was the most significant improvement work undertaken at the factory since its construction in 1986.
The company’s general manager supply chain, Bernie Pummell, said the main objectives of the project were to increase capacity by 20 per cent, improve efficiencies, improve asset utilisation, focus on products manufactured and improve quality.
Mr Pummell said Project Alpha combined German efficiency with Australian innovation to increase production speeds by up to 50 per cent in ice-cream manufacturing.
He said the upgrade had taken about two years from start to finish and included new cleaning systems, a new entry, freezers and robotic packaging equipment.
“For 15 years Peters & Brownes has been selling ice-cream to Japan and we are the largest exporter of ice-cream to Japan in Australia,” Mr Pummell told WA Business News.
“We supply the Japanese market with high-quality, super-premium ice-cream.It has higher fat levels, a sweeter flavour, is smoother, has more solids and less water. They are very big on vanilla, then chocolate and strawberry, and also the green tea ice-cream is very popular.
“Ice-cream is a real indulgence for the Japanese and it is the country’s population [128 million in 2003] which makes the size of such a deal possible.”
Mr Pummell said the company had been working with its Japanese customers to improve production efficiency and effectiveness for several years.
“Over the years we have established this alliance. It is the toughest market in the world to crack from a quality perspective,” he said.
South-East Asia is Peters & Brownes’ other major export market and the company is also currently looking at new markets.
“In Japan we have about five or six customers whose demands are all unique,” Mr Pummell said.
“We carry out a lot of research and development and work jointly on new product development.”
Peters & Brownes earns $40 million a year in exports, with an annual growth rate of 15 to 20 per cent.
Peters & Brownes has a Western Australian heritage dating back more than 100 years. Its ownership went out of the state in 2002 when New Zealand-based Fonterra Co-operative Group, one of the world’s largest dairy entities, obtained all shares in PB Foods Ltd from private owners including then CEO Graham Laitt.
Peters & Brownes was then merged, along with Mainland Products Ltd and Bonland, into Fonterra’s new Global Consumer Products Division, New Zealand Milk.
The buy-out followed the merger of Peters & Brownes strategic alliance partner Kiwi Co-operative Dairies with New Zealand Dairy Group, which formed Fonterra.
In 2003 Peters & Brownes became part of a new entity called New Zealand Milk Australasia (NZMA), a subsidiary of New Zealand Milk.
PB Foods, which is the entity that trades as Peters & Brownes, employs more than 1,200 people, and is one of the largest independent ice-cream companies in the region, with sales in excess of $400 million annually.