Baking & Snack - March 2006 - 55

also convenient to make inroads into the
US marketplace."
During its 10 years in the US, the company
studied and compared many product and consumer trends between Japan and the US. "We
have found that trends in Japan usually run five
years behind the US market," Mr. West stated.
"Japanese still prefer white pan bread, and
we are just now seeing whole-grain varieties
becoming popular. In Japan, bread is treated
more as a dessert. It has a higher sugar content
and finer grain and is not used as much as a
'utility' to make a sandwich like in the US."
FLEXIBILITY AT ITS SOUL. Both the company's production and personnel run on the
theme of flexibility and teamwork. "We have
a lean management team and count on each
employee to act as one," Mr. West added.
The plant currently runs a main shift
and a swing shift, and production varies
based on orders. Four silos hold two types
of bread flour and one pastry (low-gluten)
flour. "Flour is a critical component to our
product quality," said Shigeki Amano, technical production manager.
Portland is situated in a large wheat growing and milling area. Some raw material
prices continue to be only one-half of what
they are in Japan. The company sources its
flour from some Canadian milling companies in British Columbia, because of its white
color and unique proximate analysis. "Our
hard wheat flour is low ash (less than 0.40%)
and low protein, which are unusual specifications," Mr. Amano said.
Hard wheat flour is stored in three 60tonne bins, and soft flour is stored in a single 40-tonne bin. The facility produces a
wide range of products, which fall into one
of two categories - puff pastry or bread.
Reimelt designed and equipped the bulkhandling system, which includes several
smaller Reimelt stainless steel bins within
the building to hold ingredients such as
bagel base, nonfat dry milk, sugar, salt and
dough conditioner. A dump station transfers these materials from bags to the appropriate bins.
Central control of ingredient handling,
inventory management and recipe management was designed by Reimelt through its
Prisma PLC and has gone through several
updates during the past 10 years.

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7ëcI / 7o/ogy / '7C,

Metal Detection Systems
www.fortresstechnology.com

For more information, see Page 121

March 2006 / BAKING & SNACK / 57

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