BBC’s The One Show paid a visit to the Ice Cream Alliance Awards and spoke to some of Machinery World’s customers about their winning ice entries.
BBC’s The One Show visit the ICA Awards
News
Cheshire farm record a 40% increase in production
Cheshire Farm are recording a 40% increase on production compared to the same period last year and recently featured on BBC News.
BBC News visited Cheshire Farm, a Machinery World customer which uses ROKK machinery to talk about how great the weather this summer has affected ice cream sales. Cheshire farm are recording a 40% increase on production compared to the same period last year.
Record breaking times on the Isle of Man
If you’ve had an ice cream at the International Isle of Man TT, chances are that it will have come from local producer, wholesaler and vendor Davisons. With all that high performance technology flying around the island, it comes as no surprise to hear that Davisons have invested in their own super machines, which have increased production rates fourfold.
We caught up with Director Greig Davison to find out how his new ROKK MP1200 (1,200 litres per hour ice cream mix plant) is shattering as many records as the riders.
Ian Davison started business on the island 30 years ago as a chocolatier, adding ice cream production from 1995 – and this soon became the mainstay of the business. Applying the same business ethics of never cheating on the quality or flavour of the product, Davisons always use cream from the Isle of Man, British sugar – and the finest flavourings from Italy.
The family business, which rapidly expanded to include son Greig, cousins, uncles and even 90 year old accountant Grandad in the mix, operates 2 outlets, 7 vans – and wholesales to over 95% of the island’s other outlets and distributors.
Davisons have been customers of Machinery World for around 5 years, initially using them to quickly source spare parts for their existing machine. When it became time to purchase new machinery, Davisons didn’t hesitate to turn to Machinery World and sister company ROKK:
“We were keen to find somewhere in the UK to buy from, that kept spare parts in the UK too” explains Greig. “We really liked the simplicity of our old machinery, as if something went wrong, it was easy to diagnose and replace, so we wanted to find something which was intelligently designed with all the leading edge aspects we need, but put together in an uncomplicated way. What we didn’t like with our old machines was the time delay involved when having to deal with overseas suppliers – and the inevitable language barriers. Machinery World ticked all the boxes. Also, because of the similarity of the ROKK MP1200 to our old machines, when the Machinery World engineer came to set it up, we were able to have an extremely detailed training session – learning everything we need to know in just one day.”
Our new ROKK equipment is idiot proof, simple to use with no messing around or unnecessarily complicated technology that could go wrong – but still sophisticated enough to do everything we need it to do.”
And it certainly does everything Davisons’ need: their new plant for preparing ice cream mix includes a boiler for heating the ice cream mix and a chiller plant for cooling it post-pasteurisation – and has increased production capacity from 300ltrs per hour to 1,200ltrs per hour.
“Our ROKK system gives us the chance to do other things in the day, so we are not always playing catch up over the summer,” continues Greig. “And, of course, with Machinery World being UK based, we can get any spare parts we may need the next day. The whole team are approachable, always available on the phone and they certainly know their stuff. If we have an issue, we can send a What’s App video and get an answer within half an hour – which would have taken half a week from overseas.
“As a family business, relationships are very important – and we do like a bit of banter. All the team at Machinery World are not only knowledgeable and helpful, they are also always ready for a laugh -and great fun to work with.”
So with more time on their hands this summer, the Davisons can spare a moment to bet which of their current 32 core flavours will grab the TT’s most popular ice cream trophy this year.
Ice-cream meltdown
With temperatures exceeding 30C this week in the UK, it’s sent the British public into ice-cream meltdown, with retailers reporting a sales increase of over one hundred per cent on this time in 2017.
The Met Office have issued a health warning urging people to take precautions against sunburn, dehydration and heatstroke, but it appears many people are taking some extra cooling off steps – by stocking up our freezers with ice creams and other frozen deserts.
At Waitrose, recent sales have broken all previous records.
“Last week was our biggest ever week of ice-cream sales,” says Jess Hughes, a senior PR manager for the supermarket. Summer sales of their ice cream tubs have risen by 100 per cent compared to 2017, while sales of children’s ice lollies have shot up by 175 per cent.
Surprisingly, ‘adult’ ice lollies have topped the frozen deserts charts at the retailer, with an increase in sales of 188 per cent.
Over at Sainsbury’s, the figures around ice-cream sales have also soared, with them announcing an increase of 71 per cent in sales of both hand-held ice-creams and sharing tubs week-on-week.
If you’re struggling to cope with production, or need machinery servicing, give us a call for some expert advice or take a look at our used ice cream machinery or our new ice cream machinery that we have in stock today that can increase your productivity.
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
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.
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.
New video gallery
We’ve added a brand new section to our website showcasing all of our machine videos we take.
Video is a fantastic way of showing machinery in action and can often negate the need to view first hand, especially when our customers span the entire world. As such, the practicalities of being able to review machinery we have for sale at your desk or on your mobile makes this a useful resource.
Featuring all our major dairy machinery brands including Alfa Laval, APV Gaulin, Benhill, Carpigiani, Cattabriga, GEA Wetfalia, Gram, Promag, ROKK, Seital SPX, Stephan, Technogel, Tecnofreeze and Tetra Pak, all of our videos show the actual machines for sale, often in use too.
See the video gallery here
You can also see all of these videos on our Youtube channel here.
For more information on any of our used dairy and processing machines, just get in touch.
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.
Ice Cream that’s 500 times hotter than Tabasco
A Glasgow cafe wants to make Valentine’s Day especially hot and heavy.
The Aldwych Cafe claims its special gelato acts as an intense aphrodisiac. However, the cold treat is so hot lovers are asked to sign a waiver prior to licking it.
The Scottish cafe’s concoction is billed as one of the spiciest ice creams in the world. With a Scoville rating of close to 1.47 million, Aldwych’s “Respiro Del Diavolo” (Devil’s Breath) gelato is roughly 300 times hotter than a jalapeno.
As a result, Aldwych requires brave creamery connoisseurs to be at least 18 years old before they sample the red, creamy, and sometimes painful treat. A required waiver informs clients they risk “personal injury, illness and possible loss of life” if they consume the Devil’s Breath.
According to the New York Post, Lee Bandoni, the brother of the Cafe’s owner, said the secret dish started in Italy back in 1936.
“There was a place called Devils Bridge and with that, the Italian ice cream families used to meet up once a year and discuss how the year went for them,” he said.
“At that point, if there were any men that showed bravery then they would eat this ice cream. So, because of the Devils Bridge, they called this the Breath of the Devil.”
Cafe employees are required to wear gloves when handling the eye-watering ice cream.
A single scoop costs roughly £2.50.
A lot of Italian guys go and have a romantic evening with their girlfriends or wives and they will have some (of) this ice cream because it is a well-known fact that chili is an aphrodisiac and it is nice with a glass of wine bubbling in your mouth,” Bandoni added, according to the Post.
Few peppers – the Carolina Reaper, Ghost Pepper and Trinidad Scorpion, to name a few – have Scoville scale ratings greater than 1 million.
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