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Last week we assembled at Bimbo Bakeries USA for a guided tour of the plant. Our tour guides were Brian Peterson and Jeff Smith. In the group I was in, we were told the building has five different levels. Bimbo has 54 bakeries in the United States (it is the largest bakery in the world) and ours is the smallest of them by 50%; the larger ones are also the newer ones and can run twice as fast as the bakery in Fergus. Nonetheless, our local plant puts out about 60 to 80 loaves a minute, or about 80,000 to 82,000 loaves a day, or 350,000 to 400,000 loaves a week. What was more amazing is that they produce 17 or 18 varieties of bread during a day. The Fergus Falls plant is the only one that makes its Master Muffin Bread, accounting for about one-third of the plant's total production. (Those in attendance were able to take home a free loaf of it, some expressing dismay that others in our group had not tried it.) There are two mixers to blend the ingredients and each batch will produce about 800 loaves. A loaf of bread circulates through the oven four times. When they come out, the loaves have a temperature of 200º and they have to be cooled down to about 100º degrees before being bagged. A vacuum system lifts the loaves out of their pans. It is about a two-hour process for a loaf of bread to go through the whole system, with the cool-down accounting for about an hour of that. The bread runs through a metal detector to verify no metal fragments have made their way into any loaf, and the metal detector is checked every half hour to make sure it is running properly. We were told there are two slicers and baggers on site and that the blades to slice the bread are replaced once a week. Even then, the plant averages about one blade break a week; when that happens the whole system shuts down until every blade fragment is located. Bimbo has invested about $4.5 million in new equipment for the plant over the last couple of years. We were told the oven is the oldest piece of equipment in the plant and that it would cost $4 million to replace just it; Bimbo's is, however, doing some upgrades to the oven this year that will reduce its use of natural gas. Newer pieces of equipment include two compressors that helped reduce the temperature in parts of the building (it still gets hot, particularly in the summer), and for which Otter Tail Power gave the company some great rebates. Last year they also added 480-volt service to the building at a cost of $1 million, which also makes their operation a lot more efficient. LED lights have been installed throughout the building. Because of the plant's location, it is unique in also having a distribution center, with 13 truck doors serviced by 84 trucks the company owns. Every loaf of bread that is bagged goes on a truck for delivery the same day it is made. Because this is a distribution center, other products will be delivered to the plant for loading on the trucks. One of those is what they call "Little Bites," as to which we were told sales have gone through the roof. The trucks will head out to depots in both of the Dakotas and northern Minnesota, with each truck having four to five depots to service. Waste is shipped out to four area farmers twice a week. No buns are made locally and that sounded like a good thing because our guide said the summer months, or "bun season" is crazy for the company. Bimbo's just opened a new plant in Roseville and it does have both a bread and bun line. Our plant employs 75 individuals and is in operation from Monday night to Saturday afternoon; on weekends they do a more thorough clean-up and maintenance. This was a really interesting program, and we did see what our speaker described as ten pounds plus being rammed into a ten pound can. |
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