Baking&Snack - September 2012 - 46

NEW HORIZONS BAKING

sales for New Horizons Baking continue to expand at a record rate. Today, the core business supplies fresh buns to 1,130 outlets in five states for the nation’s largest quickservice restaurant (QSR) chain. The bakery also supplies frozen buns and English muffins throughout the same region. Second, sales for its Genesis Baking Co., a division of New Horizons, have taken off, noted Mike Porter, vice-president of sales administration for that subsidiary. This sales arm serves all third-party accounts — other than its core QSR business — with unsliced, sliced and fork-split English muffins and

a variety of soft rolls including Kaiser and dinner rolls, hot dog buns, and seeded or unseeded hamburger buns. Genesis Baking also will customdesign products. Mr. Porter cited its slogan: “Each day brings a new beginning.” With this venture, the company can explore new business opportunities beyond its horizons. Additionally, the minorityowned company operates a bakery in Fremont, IN, and a distribution company called Metraco, which is short for Melissa Williams, director of human resources; Trina Bediako, executive vice-president; and Aaron Brown, Norwalk opera-

Getting the green light
New Horizons Baking Co., Norwalk, OH, switched from paperboard cases to plastic baskets to distribute frozen English muffins as a part of its initiatives to become more sustainable and lower its costs with its core quickservice restaurant account. “We ship English muffins down to a distributor in southern Ohio and come back with a load of trays, said John Widman, ” senior vice-president of operations. Another green initiative involved installing skylights in its new English muffin facility to reduce electricity costs on sunny days. Additionally, sensors turn off the lights in its bun proofer and oven room when no one is working in there. Perhaps the most significant sustainability project involved adding an Air Management Technologies heat recovery system, which captures heat from the oven to warm the proofer. The system also can be used to preheat cold outside air and warm the facility during winter months using minimal energy. On a sunny day, skylights on the roof of the new English muffin addition to New The actual heat exHorizons’ facility allow the Norwalk, OH, bakery to turn off most of the interior lights and still continue operating in the packaging department. changer sits inside the oven stack with a damper arrangement that can divert all, some or none of the oven exhaust through the heat exchange coils, depending on the bakery’s needs. In addition to saving energy, the heat recovery system helped New Horizons get $1 million in government financial assistance (see “Taking It for Granted” on Page 35).

tions manager, who are children of Tilmon (Tim) Brown, president of the company. “Planning for the expansion actually began when Tim, along with his partners John Paterakis and Peter Grimm, purchased the company in 1995,” Mr. Widman said. With capacity strained to meet sales, the planning and plotting got serious a few years ago. New Horizons relied on its vendors, visited several other bakeries and talked to their operations executives about what equipment to purchase. “If there is reliable, previously owned equipment available, we’ll go look at it,” he said. “If we like what we see, we’ll purchase it. In the event that it’s not available, we’ll shop for new.” He noted the company did shop at the 2010 International Baking Industry Exposition, where it purchased several pieces of equipment off the show floor.

Flat-out flying
In all, 215 employees — including production, office and Metraco Transportation — work at the bakery in Norwalk. More than 30 of them are new employees hired because of the expansion of English muffin production for its Genesis Baking division. The facility sits on 25 acres and has 65,000 sq ft for processing, 20,000 sq ft for packaging, 30,000 sq ft for warehousing/ freezing and 10,000 sq ft for office and other departments. The bakery runs nearly around the clock, with 20 shifts a week and a short break for maintenance and sanitation. The plant houses two older English muffins lines and a high-speed bun line. The bun line’s throughput has increased to 5,200 doz 4-in. buns per hour from 3,900 doz buns. “We’re flat-out flying for what our equipment can do,” Mr. Widman said.

/ Baking & Snack / September 2012

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Baking&Snack - September 2012

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