Baking & Snack - October 2010 - 30

30
according to Mr. Buxton,
who was on-site for the
entire project. Like other
recent Flowers bread and
bun plants, the two lines
run side-by-side, separated
by an open corridor down
the middle. These lines
parallel the front of the
building, with perimeter
locations for bulk ingredients and ancillary services.
A series of large overhead roll-up doors in the
raw materials warehouse
and adjacent to the enclosed flour silos provide
access for equipment. The
building's 2-story layout
accommodates offices, labs
and work bays for production, engineering, maintenance and QA on the first floor, with management and
sales offices on the second. A large training room is located adjacent to the bakery's entrance.
Closed-circuit cameras stationed around the property
provide physical security, which is also incorporated in
the building's traffic pattern. "There's one way in and one
way out," Mr. Benton commented.

Spirit of Bardstown
Market demand dictates when and where Flowers Foods
builds new bakeries. In addition to its location near interstate highways that allow easy access to new markets within
a 250-mile radius, Bardstown, KY, was selected by the
$2.1 billion company because of its highly skilled labor force.
Previously, the region had supplied components to the automotive industry, but the recent recession decimated these
businesses, resulting in unemployment as high as 15% in
November 2007 when Flowers came looking at the property.
"When word got out that Flowers was building in Bardstown,
everyone in three counties wanted to work here," said Donna
Hardesty, head of the bakery's human resources department.
Ahead of the bread line's startup in May 2009, in fact, Ms.
Hardesty collected a pool of 1,000 applicants by just posting
employment ads in local newspapers and going through the
state department of employment services. Prior to ramping
up of the bread line, a core group of recently hired technicians traveled to the Newton bakery for a week of training,
then returned to the Bardstown plant to train newer recruits
who would work on additional shifts. Today, the bakery has
approximately 250 total positions.

BAKING & SNACK / October 2010

▲ Flowers Foods' state-of-the-art facility in Bardstown, KY., uses robotic pan
handling on its bread line.
FLOWERS FOODS

As a "technician labor" plant, Bardstown is laid out
and equipped to maximize automation, which is amply
demonstrated by its approach to ingredient delivery.
"The only manual addition is the oxidation and enzyme
tablets," Mr. Benton remarked. All other ingredients are
either pneumatically delivered or pumped to dispensing
points at the mixers.
Six Pfening 150,000-lb-capacity silos supply flour,
two for whole-wheat and four for enriched white. Set
on load cells, the silos provide constant verification
of their contents. Three in-line sifters feed three flour
holding bins. The bulk system also encompasses four
large liquid storage tanks for sugar, molasses, pan oil
and soy oil. Other liquid ingredients come in via tote
bins. A Pfening supersack system, comprised of four
unloading stations, dispenses the bulk minor ingredients. A 2-tank cream yeast system accepts bulk yeast
supplied by USA Yeast's Hattiesburg, MS, facility. A
Trinity Process Solutions batching system manages
ingredient delivery.
PROTECTIVE MEASURES. Both bread and bun lines
employ the sponge-and-dough method for dough preparation. For bread, an AMF 2,800-lb horizontal tilt-bowl
mixer prepares sponges, which dump into large troughs
that carry the sponge through the AMF fermentation
room. Troughs emerge and are hoisted to one of two
AMF 3,200-lb final mixers. Flowers selected its mixers to
use 250-hp motors, all interchangeable.

Baking & Snack - October 2010

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