IWM and ADDO group – a three-decade relationship pays dividends

As a UK leader in savoury foods production for decades, the ADDO Food Group is uniquely positioned to understand the benefits of long-lasting work relationships. This is why, for the past thirty years, the company has relied on IWM (Industrial Washing Machines) for sanitising and tray washing equipment.

At its Palethorpes Bakery site in Market Drayton, the ADDO Food Group produces a wide range of mouth-watering sausage rolls, slices, pastries and savoury pies. In the early 1990s, the company approached IWM with a requirement for an automated tray washer which was needed for washing and sanitising the items used for mixing savoury pie fillings. IWM designed, produced and installed a machine that enabled fast washing and drying of trays which helped speed up production at the bakery.

Six years after this, at the Pork Farms Riverside Bakery in Nottingham, an additional IWM Twin Lane multi-purpose tray washer was commissioned at the site. This tray washing equipment was later supplied with a five-stage blower system which was installed on site in Nottingham by the IWM service team to supplement the washing and sanitising system with a drying process. The T1500 has features that help reduce its carbon footprint – such as idle mode – where it shuts down wash pumps and conveyors automatically when no wash items are detected.

The twin lane T1500 with a five stage blower system was dismantled from the Nottingham site in 2019 and brought to the IWM facilities in Birmingham for refurbishment. The system was updated and then delivered to the Market Drayton site, with the whole removal, transport, refurbishment and delivery back to a different site expertly handled by IWM. 

“Having worked with ADDO Food Group companies for the best part of thirty years, we are still in a position to support these two older machines installed at the Group’s production facilities”, explained Mark Keating, UK Sales and Project Engineer at IWM. “In fact, we recently helped refurbish and update them, so that ADDO could continue to reap the benefits of fast, reliable and energy-efficient sanitising equipment. And much to our delight, in June 2020 we were asked to provide another system for ADDO’s Palethorpes Bakery in Market Drayton”. 

IWM has now completed the delivery and installation of this new machine. It is used for washing plastic trays and metal baking trays – and is fitted with an adjustable air-knife system to optimise drying performance for items of two different heights. The T400 washer has a throughput capacity of 400 trays per hour and is very competitively priced, making it an exceptionally cost-effective choice for users such as bakeries and food manufacturers with low to medium volume tray washing requirements.

The 2SB variant of the T400, as supplied to ADDO, has a two-stage blower tray washer that guarantees that the trays come out perfectly dry after the hot fresh rinse. The fresh rinse water is returned to the wash tank to save water and detergent, and the adjustable air-knife system ensures that the trays come out warm and dry, ready to be used immediately. 

While energy efficiency was a high priority for the new machine, it was also important that it should be compact, because the space available to accommodate it was limited. In response to this requirement, the IWM engineering team customised the design and construction of the machine to ensure that it would fit within the available footprint at the Market Drayton production site.

“I have known the IWM team for a number of years now and their engineers have always been exceptionally helpful and responsive”, said Paul Leese, Chief Engineer at the Palethorpes Bakery. “At the moment we have three generations of washing machines and tray washing equipment supplied by IWM and they are all integral parts of our production processes.”

“Our original machine, which is now 40 years old, is still in use every day, and thanks to IWM’s expert refurbishment and maintenance programme it is just as reliable as ever! The other two machines are also in continuous use and they are consistently saving us time, energy and money. With all of this in mind, I think it would be fair to say that investing in quality and lasting partnerships has paid impressive dividends for us!”