Baking & Snack - July 2015 - 29

SPECIAL REPORT
iba Bakery Tour: Wback GmbH

TONNES OF

BUNS

Wback's newest automated line in central
Germany consistently turns out 50,000 buns an
hour with just four people on the production floor.
by Dan Malovany

start up," Mr. Kugler admitted. "But the new production line here in Bönen was fantastic."

By the millions
Overall, Wback's high-performance lines crank out
up to 3 million buns a day for QSR chains and privatelabel retail customers throughout most of Western
Europe. Located in the Rhineland about an hour's
drive from Düsseldorf 's airport, the Bönen bakery
makes 2 million buns daily primarily for customers
in central and northern Germany, The Netherlands,
Belgium and northern France. Meanwhile, its
Leipheim facility - with its single bun line - serves
Bavaria and southern Germany as well as Austria,
Italy and a portion of France.
Part of what makes Wback so successful is its commitment to consistency and its streamlined product
portfolio. It makes just soft buns and rolls - including 4-in., 5-in. and seeded hamburger buns as well as
regular and extra-long, 7-in. hot dog buns. "We focus
on buns and being the best we can with those," Mr.
Kugler said.
Planning for the new line began in 2013 about
six months before breaking ground for the nearly
20,000-sq-ft expansion in Bönen. Mr. Kugler and a
cross-functional team at Wback collaborated closely
with its vendors, primarily Global Bakery Solutions
(GBS), which drew up no less than 30 different layouts during the course of planning for the project.
"We had worked with most of our vendors in the past,

BAKERY TOUR

For Wback GmbH, one of Europe's leading industrial
baking companies, the third time was the charm when
in 2014 it started up its latest high-speed bun operation at its 60,000-sq-ft facility in Bönen, Germany.
Although the company commissioned the line
more than a year ago, Norbert Kugler, chief engineer,
recently remembered it as if it happened yesterday.
Why wouldn't he? "The first day on April 13, we ran
test doughs," Mr. Kugler recalled. "On April 14, we
were selling product." He paused for a second, maybe
to add a little emphasis, and then uttered just three
words: "Just one day," along with a big grin.
Such a smooth start-up didn't happen by chance,
although any engineer will admit that it takes a little
luck - and a lot of coordination - to get such an
automated line up and running, especially one that
now produces more than 830 buns a minute or 50,000
buns an hour.
According to Mr. Kugler, experience from lessons
learned paved the smooth trail. As the company's brochure states, "Once you've learned something, you
don't forget it."
In 2005, when starting up its first 50,000-buns-anhour line at the Bönen bakery, where the company is
also headquarted, he noted it took two weeks of testing before Wback was able to produce salable buns for
the market. Three years later, the company opened up
its second bakery - again a similar line with 50,000
buns-an-hour capacity - in the city of Leipheim in
southern Germany. "Leipheim also took some time to

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