Established in 1934, The Village Bakery is a family-run firm, based on a shared passion for quality baking.  The company produces a wide range of crusty and sliced bread, morning goods and savouries at its state-of-the-art baking facility near Wrexham. 

 

The Village Bakery was looking to supply one of the UK’s leading retailers with a range of frozen ready to bake scones for in-store bakeries and coffee shops.  A fully automated, energy efficient in-line freezing system was required for the brand new product line.  It was vital that the freezer would run for extended production periods and enable The Village Bakery to achieve consistently high product quality.

 

In conjunction with parent company Star Refrigeration, Starfrost was able to offer a turnkey solution, combining both an in-line spiral freezer and its associated low volume natural refrigerant plant.

 

The Glacier for The Village Bakery features a spiral freezer with a 32-inch wide tight mesh stainless steel product belt and 18 tiers around a single rotating drum.  The system is capable of freezing 1,800kg/hr of unbaked scones and features a computerised HMI PLC programmable control system.

 

The Glacier spiral is designed to run for extended production periods at the Village Bakery and features a four way valve reverse cycle system for rapid defrost.  Within a production stoppage time of only 40 minutes the system automatically defrosts the freezer, clears excess moisture from the evaporator coil and brings the temperature back down ready for production to resume.

 

The evaporator design and construction ensures the greatest possible heat transfer, reducing the refrigerant load.  This results in a 15-20% energy saving compared to a conventional spiral freezer and refrigeration plant.