THE HERB FARM REVISITED
Capacity building
Developing facilities and up-scaling production
An addition to the shop and café area, which was finished before Sarah joined the company, created a large dedicated manufacturing room with an attached space for workshop and seminar activities. Sarah sees the ability to continue to manufacture The Herb Farm products on-site as one of the company's important points of difference, so in 2008 the business continued this expansion of its facilities by moving into what had originally been the family homestead on the property. This provided additional office space, a staff meeting room and rest room facilities and a new site for an expanded manufacturing unit with the capacity to further increase the scale of production.
In planning the step-up in production capacity Lynn and Sarah were concerned that they did not lose product quality and the desired properties of the ingredients, and decided to commission Crop & Food Research to provide technical input into the up-scaling process.
"This input meant we could be confident that the much-loved natural qualities of our products could be retained in a new production line," says Sarah, "and also gave us the opportunity to trial, in a systematic way, a range of new equipment before we purchased it."
Instrumental to this commission was access to government funding through the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST) Technology for Business Growth programme, which matched The Herb Farm's contribution to the research dollar for dollar. Several scientists, including biochemists, a chemical engineer and a food development technologist, worked closely with Lynn and Sarah, first of all testing existing batch sizes for properties like anti-oxidant levels and consistency, then trialling different equipment to ensure those same attributes would be maintained in a larger-scale production.
The new jacketed pan in action
"There was a good deal of testing involved," says Sarah. "For example, the first bit of new equipment we trialled for emulsifying changed the products considerably – the consistency and the feel of them on the skin was different, so we had to look at other options."
A variety of equipment was trialled until a one-litre batch could be consistently produced to meet their established specifications. The batch size was then up-scaled again and retested to make sure that none of the important attributes were lost when produced on an even larger scale.
When the right combination of process and equipment was finally worked out, The Herb Farm invested in a new range of equipment – a jacketed pan, filling machine and a larger blender – which they were confident would allow them to efficiently take the manufacturing capability to the next level of production. The new equipment became fully operational in the present manufacturing facility in May 2008.
The mixing and emulsifying of the creams can now be done in batches ten times larger than previously, with the ability to upscale further if required. "With the production methods we were using before you couldn't do any bigger batches because you were physically pouring the hot liquid, which meant that you had to keep the batches quite small. Now the new larger batches can be cold filled by machine which makes the process a lot more efficient and the product even more consistent," says Lynn.
