Staying Premium by Keeping Costs in Check

In 2020, the collaboration between Golden West Food Group and QUPAQ began and have continued ever since. Focus was on improving and simplifying the packaging lines at GWFG’s site in Vernon, Los Angeles.

US food manufacturers are looking into a lot of challenges now and in the near future. However, the companies that act proactively by keeping costs and capacity under control position themselves in a more competitive space.

Golden West Food Group is such a company that acts proactively. For instance, they take responsibility to meet growing labor shortage up front; a problem that is especially prominent in urban areas like LA where costs of living for the workforce can be higher. By automating their packaging processes, workforce has been freed to be inserted elsewhere on the line, whereby it has increased the capacity overall without having increased the running costs.

Golden West Food Group produces well renowned brands such as Travis Kelce’s Kitchen, by Chef Ramsay, Tillamook, Delicious Eats, Guy Fieri’s Flavortown, Just Cook, Jack Daniel’s BBQ, American BBQ Company, and many more.

Sustainable packaging plays a huge part in GWFGs mission and value-set, where they have a defined goal on using eco-friendly packaging to minimize waste and carbon emissions. This introduced a need for more flexibility in their packaging processes as they wanted to be able to switch from one packaging material to another one quickly. That is where QUPAQ came into the picture.

The Smart Buffer Servo tray denesters were chosen to denest trays on the packaging line. Before, this was done manually by several people, but now it is fully automated. This brought a higher capacity, better uptime, and more cost-effective operation – all while lowering the need and demand for new workers in a time of labor shortage.

The Smart Buffer Servo excels in its flexibility as it can easily be changed to a new type of tray and material. With many options available on denesting tools – plastic, foam, aluminum, paper, cardboard – it has provided GWFG a frontrunner position within sustainability without increasing costs. If the demand should change in the future, or if new and better packaging types arrive, GWFG can easily embed and make use of it among the first.

When talking about room for improvement in relation to packaging, the statement should be taken very literally. The physical space available on the line layout can become a constraint for improvement.

The small footprint with QUPAQ’s solution was also a deciding factor for GWFG:

“By having QUPAQ’s simple and reliable denesters installed, we are now able to not only optimize our output – we also get to do it on a much smaller footprint than we did before. Basically, this installation has allowed for increased productivity per square feet.”

Stefan Riderer, Head of Engineering, Golden West Food Group

The solution footprint allows for even more flexibility overall when looking to improve further – now and in the future. And all reports shows that increased flexibility is needed.

The demand and volume output for food manufacturers is rising rapidly. A recent Statista report shows a huge increase in added value in the food market. However, value added per capita, the value-added margin, output, and labor efficiency as well as labor productivity is stagnant and is forecasted to be so henceforth for many years to come.

And with a pressure on supply chains, the cost for the uplift in demand can easily end up with the consumers. Therefore, all improvements that can be made that frees up running costs and demand for manual labor will make food manufacturers a lot more competitive.

Improvement and competitive advantage lie within automation.