The Customer

A leading frozen bakery supplier, Gilsons specialises in traditional loaves, artisan bread, rolls and sweet buns. Gilsons supplies major retailers and foodservice customers across the UK with a wide range of fully and par-baked frozen bakery products.

The Requirement 

Gilsons was recently looking to boost processing capacity on two bread production lines. The bakery firm also wanted to upgrade from a manual blast freezing process by investing in a fully automated freezing system.

The Solution

Starfrost designed, built, installed and commissioned two bespoke spiral freezer systems for Gilsons. Starfrost’s Helix Spiral freezers have enabled Gilsons to fully automate two processing lines, boost capacity and improve product quality.

The first Spiral Freezer was designed for freezing baked bread rolls, with a processing capacity of 1,400kg/hr. It features a 32-inch wide stainless steel conveyor belt around a single rotating drum, with 26 spiralling tiers.

The second freezing system is a flexible multi-temperature double drum Helix Spiral. In the double drum system the product is cooled using forced ambient air as it is conveyed around the first drum. The cooled bread loaves then enter a separate enclosure for final freezing on the second drum. The system is designed to give Gilsons maximum flexibility, by using the second drum for product chilling or freezing.

Robert Long, Sales Director, Starfrost

“We won the tender for this project based on our ability to design a highly flexible freezing system in line with the client’s budget. Starfrost has over 30 years’ experience in the bakery sector, providing energy efficient solutions to help processors improve product quality. If bakery products are frozen too quickly from a high temperature, surface cracking can appear and this affects product quality and appearance. Our engineering team designed a system to accurately control temperature and retention times. This ensures optimum product quality for Gilsons and its customers.”