Spring Gully sees powerful process improvements

Iconic Australian food producer Spring Gully Foods produce a range of pickles, sauces, relishes, chutneys, honeys, jams and fruit spreads.

The company was forced to enter Voluntary Administration in April 2013.

The fourth generation, family owned and operated company was faced with ongoing price pressure, reduced revenue and increased costs which required urgent action to keep the business viable.

Media support resulted in increased sales which helped cash flow, but not efficiency.

Spring Gully still faced with high production costs, and the Government pledged support to purchase key equipment to increase production efficiency. But as part of this it sought independent review and analysis to identify how the financial support could provide the most benefit.

SAGE Automation was engaged to help.

SAGE undertook a detailed analysis of the business and found that the proposed new Case Packer would not deliver the best bang for buck. 

Bottle necks between the material delivery and jar filling processes would leave this new equipment grossly underutilised. 

A process improvement solution was developed to deliver much greater results.

The analysis and recommendations also covered product pricing, a review into the number of products and the resulting manufacturing process changeovers, packaging, labelling, warehousing, and design all came under the spotlight.