Irwin’s Bakery, one of Northern Ireland’s most famous and well-established, family-owned bakeries, knows exactly how important it is to keep up with the times. Founded in 1912 in Armagh, a county in the central part of Northern Ireland, the bakery has witnessed over 100 years of innovations and changes in the baking industry. After all that time, its decision makers know exactly how important it is to deliver a range of products the way that consumers like them.
In an industry with a global value in excess of $300 billion, Irwin’s has to ensure its products maintain fantastic standards to keep its place amongst the best. With new regulations such as EU Regulation 1169/2011, a food labelling regulation, as well as requirements to remain compliant to EuPIA standards, the baked goods industry is fast-moving in every way imaginable.
With high volumes and short shelf life, baked products can lose their value quickly and any slowdown in the manufacturing process can have a big impact on the bottom line.
“We’ve picked the right machinery, the best machinery, to meet the needs of the future… we’re able to program, get the speeds, get the quality of print.”
Brian Irwin, Chairman
Changing recipes and shapes of products regularly throughout the day, and in turn packaging artwork and types of packaging. Irwin’s relies heavily upon its infrastructure that it can handle the high volumes as any downtime will have a significant negative effect on the bottom line.
Being required to print important legislative-required information such as ‘best before’ dates and traceability information on such an array of assets, Irwin’s realised that their current infrastructure would become obsolete and unusable in the next one-to-two years.
Proactively tendering how they might maintain delivering their products with world-class printing standards, they considered key aspects of what they needed in their new-and-improved printers. Among them were:
- Flexibility
- Reliability
- Versatility
- Engineering Support
>> Related: Infographic: Changing the Face of Food Traceability
Domino (via its Irish distributor Codico) has been working with Irwin’s Bakery for over 25 years, with one printer on-site in 1988, to over 20 units today. Offering fantastic innovations like Domino’s V230i has ensured reliability by removing the air out of the printing process, enabling a decent quality print from Domino North America Twitterfirst print to last print.
“One of our strengths as Northern Ireland’s largest, independent plant bakery is our range of products. With that range of products we have to have a high level of flexibility.”
David Holmes, Operational Director
Why did Irwin's partner with Domino? Irwin's Operational Director David Holmes explained that it was due to the company's proven reliability and global support network, ensuring consistency even with the next generation of printers.
The next gen printers aren't the only ones, either. As a well-founded expert and partner to many in the baked goods industry, Domino places compliance and customer service at the forefront of its service offerings.
Find out more about Domino’s place in the baked goods industry in our white paper: ‘Confronting coding challenges in the bakery industry' and make sure to watch the original case study below.
To find out more about Domino North America's service offerings, be sure to contact us today through our website, or contact via Twitter, or LinkedIn.
Otherwise, to find out more about Irwin’s Bakery, be sure to check out their website, Facebook, and Twitter profiles.