F Smales & Son Ltd: Seafood, UK
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Frozen fish has never looked so good since family-run fish processing business F Smales & Son invested in a CRYO-QUICK™ VT freezer. Throughput is up and so is product quality.
Smales and Son, fish merchant of Hull, has come through the hard times better than most. Since the 1970s, as catches have declined and ports closed, many of the companies who process and sell fish have suffered along with the trawlermen. But Smales has managed to keep growing. From its foundation in 1937 this family business has expanded to become probably the largest independent fish processor in Europe, with a total of 560 employees and a turnover of more than £60 million. |
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"Our strength is in sourcing high-quality raw materials," says chairman Colin Smales, grandson of the founder. Although the company continues to buy as much fish as possible from the U.K. fleet, it has turned to overseas suppliers as domestic catches have fallen. Today much of the fish comes from Norway, Iceland, the Faroes and Russia, unloaded at Hull from vessels under contract to Smales. |
"In recent years we have grown dramatically," says Colin Smales. In 1992, for instance, the firm opened a new £4.5 million fish processing factory at Hull and a new cold store with a capacity of 5500 tonnes. It didn't stop there: Smales has now bought another factory nearby, which it plans to open in April 2000 Smales when refurbishing work is complete.
Along with the growth has come a change in direction. Although Smales remains an important supplier of fresh fish to wet-fish counters and fish-and-chip shops, 90 per cent of the business is now in frozen fish. Supermarkets, food service companies and restaurant chains are the biggest customers for "Billy Boy" fish fillets, the main Smales brand name, as well as Smales frozen fish to be sold under their own labels.
The supermarkets' logistical requirements and emphasis on product quality and hygiene can be challenging for their suppliers, admits Colin Smales. "But we have always been a firm that is willing to invest," he says, "and that is one of the secrets of our success." A key part of this investment has been the Air Products CRYO-QUICK™ VT cryogenic freezer which has increased freezing capacity more than threefold while improving product quality.
Room to Expand
Working 20 hours a day, seven days a week, the Hull factory handles 50-100 tonnes/day of cod, haddock, saithe and plaice. Incoming fish goes into cold storage before being filleted. Most is then frozen, graded for size, coated if necessary with breadcrumbs or batter, packed and sent to the distribution warehouse. The factory also has a smoking line.
"By the middle of 1997 we had decided to increase our freezing capacity," says factory manager Paul Bell. "Our original Torry twin-belt freezing tunnel with mechanical refrigeration limited throughput to 50-60 stones an hour (320-380 kg/h), and the system was coming to the end of its economic life. We wanted something with more capacity and shorter freezing times."
The company looked at both mechanical and cryogenic freezers. Paul Bell had come across cryogenic freezers before, when he worked for other frozen food companies, so he knew about the quick freezing that cryogenics could provide, and the associated product quality improvement. "The old freezer took 10-15 minutes to reach crystallisation point, and the total freezing time was 20-25 minutes," he says. "We knew that a cryogenic freezer could cut these times considerably, as well as increasing throughput."
The promise of better product quality meant that Smales had soon narrowed the field down to two cryogenic freezer suppliers, of whom one was Air Products with its CRYO-QUICK™ VT freezer. "Two things swung us in favour of Air Products," says Paul Bell. "The first was their professionalism. We were very impressed with their presentation to us - we felt they had really taken the time to understand our business."
"The second plus point was the size of the CRYO-QUICK™ VT. The conventional cryogenic freezer design was 20 metres long, and we would have struggled to fit it into the factory space available. The CRYO-QUICK™ VT offered the same throughput in half this length, as well as slightly better product quality."
No Shattered Tails
There was, however, a potential snag. Although the innovative design of the CRYO-QUICK™ VT greatly improves the controllability of the freezer, and hence product quality, the freezer is so new that Air Products did not have a reference site in the fish-processing industry.
"We do have to be careful when comparing fish with, say, beefburgers," Paul Bell explains. "Beefburgers are pretty uniform, whereas the size of a fish fillet can vary from a couple of ounces up to 5 lb, so we need to avoid over- or under-freezing. Most fillets have the skin on, which makes them stronger, but some are skinless. If you over-freeze a skinless fillet it becomes very brittle, and the tails tend to shatter. And apart from that, of course, over-freezing is wasteful."
In the end the Air Products staff were able to convince Smales that the superior controllability of the CRYO-QUICK™ VT would make shattered tails a thing of the past. To back up their technical presentations they arranged visits to other sites operating CRYO-QUICK™ VT freezers. "In fact we visited the Oaklands beefburger factory here in Hull," says Colin Smales, "and they were good enough to arrange a demonstration using some of our fish fillets."
More, Faster, Better
Smales ordered the new freezer at the start of 1998 and it was commissioned in April. "We did have to take down a wall to get it in," Paul Bell recalls, "but the modular design of the new factory meant that wasn't a problem. Air Products staff did most of the work in conjunction with our architects, and the installation and commissioning all went very smoothly."
A storage tank on the factory site provides around one-and-a-half days' supply of liquid nitrogen for the freezer. "We've never had a problem with the liquid nitrogen supply," says Paul Bell. "A telemetry system tells Air Products our stock level at all times, and the tanker delivers every day or two. Then the distribution people phone every Friday to check that everything's running smoothly."
At 180 stones an hour (1,140 kg/h), maximum instantaneous throughput of the new system is three times that of the old mechanical freezer. Residence time is down to five minutes, notes Paul Bell, and the time to the crystallisation point has fallen to only one or two minutes. "We have significantly reduced evaporation loss during freezing, and the fish now spends much less time in cold storage waiting to be frozen," he says. "We get more uniform freezing across the belt, so wastage is less, and the new freezer is very easy to control."
According to Paul Bell, Smales is already looking at another CRYO-QUICK™ VT to replace a mechanical freezer as part of the refurbishment of the coating line for fish in batter and breadcrumbs. Meanwhile, a year after the new freezer was commissioned, its effects have spread to the boardroom and beyond. "We have had an extremely positive response from our customers," reports Colin Smales, "and we ourselves are certain that we now have a better product, with higher throughputs and less waste."
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