Company Archives - Machinery World

‘Turning off our blast freezer until summer’: how UK firms are cutting energy costs

‘Turning off our blast freezer until summer’: how UK firms are cutting energy costs

From an ice cream factory weighing up closing for three weeks over Christmas to a bistro now only open for bookings

David Equi can’t seem to catch a break. He opened a gleaming new factory in Glasgow for his eponymous luxury ice cream business on the eve of the coronavirus pandemic and has now missed out on the cutoff for government energy support by a single day.

Faced with a sharp rise in energy costs, he plans to shut down his blast freezer – a container that rapidly cools 40 pallets of ice cream – this winter. “We’re turning that off and using our existing freezers just to save money, and will switch it back on in the summer. We’re just looking at the tiniest wee things where we can save.”

Equi is also considering closing the factory entirely for up to three weeks over Christmas to save on bills, rather than operating on a skeleton staff as usual at the business, which supplies customers from Aldi to the Gleneagles hotel.

Many businesses will have invested in long-term sustainability measures to become more energy efficient but now, faced with rising prices, firms of all sizes across the country are examining every available measure to cut their bills.

David Equi of Equi’s Ice Cream
David Equi runs an ice-cream business but missed out on the cutoff for government energy support by a day. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

David Equi says: ‘We’re just looking at the tiniest wee things where we can save.’ Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

The electrical retailer Currys plans to turn down the brightness of its TVs; Vivendi, the owner of the Havas advertising agency, is turning down the temperature in its offices by 1C; and 300,000 LED lights will illuminate Oxford Street this Christmas – cheaper and more efficient than standard lightbulbs.

The incentive is clear: the restaurant and pub group Mitchells & Butlers said at the end of last month that its energy bill had almost doubled to £150m on pre-pandemic costs. Alston Wholefoods, a village shop in Cumbria, has switched off its freezer and is instead using laminated pictures of products for customers to order, saving an estimated £3,000 on its annual bill.

Some small businesses fear they will be asked by the government to shut down this winter to conserve energy supplies. Others say the sudden increase in costs has left them fighting for survival.

Article from The Guardian, read the full story here.

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See us at the Ice Cream and Gelato Expo 2019!

See us at the Ice Cream and Gelato Expo 2019!

See us 12th-14th February at the Yorkshire Event Centre, Harrogate

The Ice Cream and Gelato Expo is a unique expo showcasing a huge assortment of ice cream varieties together with its equipment and supplies. This show provides a unique forum for suppliers, retailers, caterers and manufacturers of ice cream products. 

The show aims to encourage and support the production, vending and consumption of premium quality ice creams and other frozen treats. The Ice Cream and Gelato Expo also showcases the various types of machinery and equipment’s utilized by the ice cream industry.

The event enjoys massive popularity among all the sections of the society and within all age groups. The event provides the ideal opportunity to business to build brand images, create and optimize business opportunities and launch new products.

If you’re looking for new products, suppliers, inspiration or a new business venture, don’t miss out on the only dedicated exhibition for the Ice Cream Industry.

To pre-register please click here.

Click here to watch the highlights of the Ice Cream Expo 2017 or click here to watch Steve Christensen: The Ice Cream Bloke’s videos of the first and second day.

Opening Times

Tuesday 12th February
10.00am – 5.00pm (last entry 4.30pm)

Wednesday 13th February
10.00am – 5.00pm (last entry 4.30pm)

Thursday 14th February
10.00am – 3.00pm (last entry 2.30pm)

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New addition to the Ciccarelli family business

New addition to the Ciccarelli family business

If you’ve had an Italian gelato in the North East of England, chances are it will have been made by one of the Gregorio brothers of family-run business Ciccarelli. The fleet operators, food service wholesalers and owners of a gelateria on South Beach still use an antique Carpigiani L40 to make multi award winning gelato – but the veteran has recently been joined by a brand new Cattabriga Multifreeze Pro 18.

We spoke to Domenico to find out how the two new workmates were getting along.

Ciccarelli started serving gelato to the people of Northumberland in 1966 from just one ice cream van. Today the business, which is run by the five Gregorio brothers Michele, Antonio, Gino, Franco and Domenico, operates a fleet of 30 vans, multiple static pitches, a beach-side Artisan Gelateria, 200 cover Fish & Chip Restaurant Takeaway and an Ice Cream Factory which wholesales to some of the best known restaurants and tourist attractions in the region.

Named for mother Elena (nee Ciccarelli), who still plays an active role in the business, the gelateria produces over 40 flavours daily, using the finest ingredients from Italy blended with milk and cream from the local dairy. The family don’t use freezers for storage but produce fresh batches on multiple batch freezers all day, every day – which leads you to wonder – just how many litres will the Carpigiani have produced in its life span?

They invested in their brand new Cattabriga Multifreeze Pro 18 after Franco visited the Machinery World stand at the Ice Cream Expo and was shown the batch machine in action. His positive reaction prompted Domenico to drive to Machinery World with some mix to try it out first hand:

Whilst we have been buying parts from Machinery World for about ten years, we used to buy our machines from Italy,” says Domenico. “But being able to pop down and trial the machine with our own mix was fantastic – and I was incredibly impressed from the word go with both the machine and the Machinery World approach.

hey were as fast and efficient with the delivery and installation of the Cattabriga as they are with the spare parts arm of the business,” he continued. “An engineer came up, installed the machine and did a full days’ training with the staff. He also left his phone number which was great, as with most things it takes time to get used to – we didn’t believe how efficiently it could work at lower settings. When we came across a problem he answered straight away and gave us all the reassurance we needed as we kept jamming up the blade.

And the machine itself?

I have always wanted a brand new Cattabriga,” admits Domenico “and LOVE the economy of metal blades, as I change the plastic scrappers religiously every season on all the batch freezers.

The capacity range is incredible – I still can’t quite believe that you can mix anything between 2litres and 18litres in the same barrel.

The girls love it too:

It freezes really quickly, making production so efficient – we were using 3 machines in a pattern continuously making small batches all day, but now I just use this one – Jessica

I like how we can choose separate settings for the sorbets, the choice of levels of hardness and how quickly it freezes. The front door doesn’t ice up either so it is incredibly easy to operate – Kirsten

So will the Cattabriga take the place of the Carpigiani?

It is a fantastic machine, but, hey, the L40 is family – if you can’t use the stick (paddle) you’re not a true gelateo!” laughs Domenico.

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Planning ahead for 2019!

Planning ahead for 2019!
The Ice Cream Alliance is a membership association that supports the ice cream industry. Their mission is to “encourage and support the production, vending and consumption of premium ice creams and other frozen treats”.

It is the only membership trade association for the ice cream industry in the United Kingdom and is the organiser of the Ice Cream Expo. This is an annual event and the only one of its kind in the UK, attracting visitors and businesses from all over the world.


What does the ICA do?

The Ice Cream Alliance works hard to represent the interests of its members as well as the general trade and to promote the industry as a whole. This can involve liaising with authorities such as EHOs, Trading Standards, planning officers and event organisers to best help members.

More particularly, they are involved in an ongoing campaign regarding ice cream in schools, including lobbying Parliament and influencing policy makers, addressing the media and giving access to practical tools to help their members.

They are also working hard to promote quality ice cream. This involves giving the public information about what real artisan ice cream is and the opportunity to enjoy local ice cream products.

If you’d like a copy of the 2019 Wall Planner, you can download one on the link below

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Men in black

Men in black

Our new VW Transporter service van has arrived in gleaming back paintwork with new graphics to match our website.

The vehicle joins our existing fleet which will all eventually be upgraded with matching vehicles.

The Machinery World brand is a very visible aspect of our business, therefore we were keen to integrate it strongly onto our vehicle liveries with the help of our long-standing design and digital agency HTDL who designed the vehicle livery.

Commented Paul Crowter, Managing Director

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Vanilla ice cream at the ‘meeting of the century’

Vanilla ice cream at the ‘meeting of the century’

After handshakes, smiles and a thumbs-up, Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un wrapped up their half-day summit in Singapore with a working lunch. Here’s what was on the menu:

Starters

  • Traditional prawn cocktail served with avocado salad
  • Green mango kerabu with honey lime dressing and fresh octopus
  • “Oiseon” Korean stuffed cucumber

Main course

  • Beef short rib confit, served with potato dauphinois and steamed broccolini, red wine sauce on the side
  • Combination of sweet and sour crispy pork and Yangzhou fried rice with homemade XO chilli sauce
  • “Daegu jorim” soy braised cod fish with radish, Asian vegetables

Desserts

  • Dark chocolate tartlet ganache
  • Haagendazs vanilla ice cream with cherry coulis
  • Tropezienne

Some highlights of the menu included mango kerabu, a fresh mouth-watering salad dish popular among Malaysians, Yangzhou fried rice, which originates from southern China, and Korean dishes including the“Oiseon” stuffed cucumber and “Daegu Jorim” cod. The menu is kind of out of Trump’s comfort zone till it gets to dessert—he’s known as a huge fan of vanilla ice cream, and eats two scoops of it every day.

Despite outsiders not knowing a lot about his food habits, Kim Jong Un has been described as a foodie who loves luxury foreign foods—especially cheese, which did not feature on the menu. Today’s working lunch seems lighter on the symbolism than the menu at the inter-Korean summit in April, where South Korea served Kim rösti, a Swiss potato fritter dish he enjoyed in his boarding school days in Switzerland, and a cheery mango mousse cake symbolizing Korean unity that managed to anger Japan.

One of the most talked about dishes at the Trump-Kim summit, however, was not actually served at the working lunch. The thousands of reporters in Singapore covering the summit have been analysing the kimchi ice cream offered to them at the media center in quite some detail.

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Elastic ice cream?

Elastic ice cream?
Move Over Soft Serve, There’s a New Ice Cream in Town
A new shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, serves traditional Middle Eastern ice cream, known for its elastic properties.

The Middle East and Turkey have a traditional ice cream which  has a very particular texture, with an elasticity similar to fresh mozzarella, the ice cream is known as “booza” in Arabic, and Michael Sadler, a former Oxford scholar, is opening a booza shop on Monday in Brooklyn with several partners. The resulting elasticity of booza is by it being made with the ground roots of orchids (known as salep or sahlab) and the pounding technique used for freezing it. 

Michael Sadler contends that it’s the new ice cream of choice. There are shops selling booza elsewhere in the States, but what sets Mr. Sadler’s version apart is the variety of non-traditional flavours. Instead of simply pistachio or qashta (candied cream), you may be tempted by rich swirls of strawberry, black walnut, salted caramel, or even saffron-peppercorn.

See our complete range of new ice cream machines or our used ice cream machinery stock here.

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A vanilla ice-cream shortage has hit the UK

A vanilla ice-cream shortage has hit the UK

When asked their favourite ice cream flavour, few people would say vanilla – but now that we’ve found out the UK has a shortage of the stuff, we’re suddenly aware of how much we love it.

The perfect accompaniment to apple crumble, treacle tart and, um, more exciting ice cream flavours, vanilla is a mainstay in many household freezers.

The nation’s favourite flavour is already out of stock for the foreseeable future in some of the capital’s gelato stores, with one shop in Chiswick, West London, posting a sign telling customers that an “unprecedented” vanilla pod shortage was to blame.

It’s due to poor harvests earlier this year in Madagascar, which caused the price of vanilla pods to soar by up to 500 per cent.

A hefty cyclone, named Enwao, hit the country – where 80 per cent of the world’s vanilla is produced – in March and destroyed a substantial part of the island’s vanilla plantations, which reduced production rates by 30 per cent.

Mamy Razakarivony, president of the national vanilla exporters’ group, described this as a ‘catastrophic season’ in an interview with Reuters, and it seems this has now impacted the UK, with ice cream chains putting signs in their windows saying the classic ice cream is out of stock.

According to the Evening Standard, Odonno’s in Chiswick informed customers that an ‘unprecedented’ shortage of vanilla pods meant that vanilla ice cream would not be on the menu.

We hope we can resume offering vanilla ice cream as soon as the new 2017 vanilla crop becomes available said the owners.

Unsurprisingly, this is already having a huge impact on British retailers, particularly smaller outlets with lower resources for whom the price has become too much to grapple with.

Vanilla has been the most popular ice cream flavour in the UK for decades, according to the Ice Cream Alliance, but it looks like the shortage will have us reaching for riskier alternatives that many cutting-edge gelato shops now offer, think basil, olive oil and beetroot.

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Indian yoghurt market forecast to show exponential growth

Indian yoghurt market forecast to show exponential growth

International dairy companies can tap in to a growing demand for yogurt in India, according to a recently-published report by TechSci Research.

The yogurt market in India grew at a CAGR of 28.9% between 2011 and 2015 says the report and is projected to grow at an even faster pace over next five years and touch $1bn by 2021.

Easy availability of products, and rising emphasis on low calorie and low fat content of food products is driving yogurt consumption in India. Yogurts are gradually eating away the share of traditional dairy products in urban and semi urban cities, due to increasing health awareness, better quality of packaged yogurt and increasing yogurt flavors.

Yoghurt demand
With growing yogurt demand and only a handful of organized players offering yogurt, the prices of these products are anticipated to grow through 2021, the report says.

Currently, around 80% of India’s dairy production comes from small enterprises, with an average herd size of only one or two cows. The larger, organized, Indian companies and cooperatives have been attempting to combine small localized production to ‘demand centers’ across the country.


Shift to organised dairy companies

Laltu Sinha, research manager with TechSci Research, told DairyReporter that the industry is changing.

The Indian dairy products market is expected to witness a shift from unorganized to organized sector,” Sinha said.

The rise in the organized sector in India dairy products market can be attributed to rising demand for high quality packaged products, especially in urban areas. However, in rural areas, acceptance of packaged dairy products is slowly gaining momentum.

However, the dairy market is highly fragmented with the top ten players occupying less than 60% of the market share.

See the full story here

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Machinery World customers clean-up at the National Ice Cream awards

Machinery World customers clean-up at the National Ice Cream awards

The industry’s leading ice cream competition, the National Ice Cream Awards took place at the beginning of March this year with a multitude of wins for Machinery World customers.

Notable amongst the recognition given for the excellence in ice cream production was Machinery World customer, Mario’s Ice Cream, for the Open Flavour Award which secured them the prestigious Silver Challenge Cup.

Mario’s Ice Cream also won the Dairy Ice Cream Continuous Silver medal.

Manfredi’s Ices won the Dairy Ice Cream Continuous Bronze medal using a ROKK RFE600 freezer and James Rizza & Sons won the Dairy Ice Cream Continuous Special Diploma also using a ROKK RFE600 freezer.

Manfredi’s Ices also picked up an Ice Cream Continuous Special Diploma using the same ROKK RFE600 freezer and Maud’s Ice Creams took a Silver Medal for the Ice Cream Open – Toffee category using a ROKK RFE1200 freezer.

Mario’s Ice Cream scored a third win in the Ice Cream Open – Toffee category with a Special Diploma and Maud’s Ice Creams and Morelli’s Ice Cream took a Bronze and Silver medal respectively for the Ice Cream Open – Cookies category using their ROKK RFE1200 freezers.

Morelli’s Ice Cream and Ryeburn of Helmsley also scored well in the Ice Cream Open category with Silver Medals using their ROKK RIF1500 fruit feeders.

ROKK customer James Rizza & Sons gained a Special Diploma in the Ice Cream Open – Rasp Pavlova category.

Overall, a fantastic accolade for all Machinery World customers, we wish you all the best for the 2017 awards!

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