Guidance from CenFRA Ltd has helped Living Salads reap the rewards of new technology by improving product quality and competitiveness.

A centre for providing automation and robotic knowledge to the UK food and beverage manufacturing sector, CenFRA Ltd played an integral role in the recent expansion of award-winning Living Salads.

The company was hesitant about committing to new technology on the factory floor and approached CenFRA for its unbiased, specialist guidance to ensure that the chosen system was the best for the job.

Twelve months on from the initial enquiry, Living Salads is reaping the benefits of improved product quality and competitiveness, enjoying a 50 per cent increase in production units with a matched decrease in labour costs.

With so many available options, CenFRA whittled it down to 14 opportunities for Living Salads to consider including simultaneous tray filing and harvesting, tray dispensing, integrating a seeder unit with a tray filler and various automated packing and transport systems.

All of the options presented by CenFRA were offered as solutions to help improve the competitiveness of Living Salads. CenFRA was able to highlight areas of the business where an automation solution could help to reduce risk, cost and improve productivity and quality.

CenFRA also brought funding opportunities to the attention of Living Salads, which are available through the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE). The RDPE is managed by Yorkshire Forward and jointly funded by DEFRA and the EU and has £63 million to invest in rural businesses over a six-year period.

Living Salads accessed a £60,000 grant (40 per cent of eligible costs) through the Rural Enterprise Investment Programme, which offers grants starting from £25,000 and is available to rural businesses wanting to grow and become more productive.

The grant was used to install the new packing equipment at Living Salads and the company has now increased the speed and packing efficiency of the ‘living salad’ trays, and has reduced manual handling while adding value to the product.

Introducing automation and robotic systems at Living Salads has not cost people jobs, but instead has allowed the company to produce more products, expand the business and ultimately create more jobs.

Founder of Living Salads Andrew Johnson said: “We engaged with CenFRA on a recommendation from Yorkshire Forward, which advised us that CenFRA would be able to confirm that we were investing our money in the right place and that we had chosen the right functions to deliver the greatest benefits.

“CenFRA is an impartial, authoritative and crucial link between food manufacturers and automation suppliers and Living Salads was able to trust CenFRA’s recommendations because of its expertise and impressive market knowledge.

“Living Salads is now confident that investing in automation and robotics can help maintain profit margins through issuing better controlled costs and improved quality and product reliability. I believe that CenFRA is vital in the food industry's quest to stay competitive and I am sure we will be turning to them again in the future.”

CenFRA is funded principally by Yorkshire Forward but with additional support from Northern Way. The Doncaster-based centre is in partnership with a number of the country’s leading independent robotic and automation engineering centres of expertise.