The Baxter family, which is now in its fourth generation, have been producing some of Britain's finest soups, preserves, condiments, pour over sauces, fruit specialties and a wide range of other fine quality food products since 1868 when George Baxter opened a small grocery shop in Fochabers and his wife Margaret started making jams and jellies in the back of the shop.
The son William and his wife Ethel in 1916 built a small factory and begun to travel all over Scotland selling the Baxters preserves. Ten years later they enlarged the range of products; by introduction of beetroot and soup as The Royal Game Soup the fame of Baxters products grew quickly. Cleverly blending old ideas and culinary tradition with new, and drawing on the abundance of fine local produce Ethel Baxter created an exceptional range of soups. She also pioneered the canning of soft fruits at a time when the whole process of canning was still very much in its infancy.
The next generation of Baxter family came to join the family firm at the end of the second world war and by 1950 Baxters was a business with 20 employees and a turnover of about 1.000 £ a week. Gordon and his wife Ena began to travel and found the way to export they products to USA. They discovered on their trips new ideas that changes the shape of the business forever introducing new concept as marketing and the new products packaging as gift packs and gift hampers. They continued creating an unrivalled range of soups, new varieties of beetroots, new flavours of jam and marmalade, new chutneys and sauces and at the same time started a long term programme of investment in new technology.
During this time consumer tastes were also changing rapidly and a new health-consciousness was beginning to emerge along with a growing demand for different flavours. The development team was able to respond introducing new product as the Vegetarians soup ranges and where possible additives, preservatives, and artificial colouring were completely eliminated and more emphasis placed on low-fat, high fibre recipes.
Today with over 150 fine food products Baxters satisfies all the palates. In 1992 Gordon handed over the managing directorship to his daughter Audrey and the fourth generation of Baxters took up the reins. In 2000s Baxters ventured into something slightly different and new for the company: the acquisition of other companies (for ex. Garner's Food Ltd) and the opening of retail outlets, the first one at Aberdeen Airport. Today Baxters Food Group has five outlets at its Highland Village in Fochabers and a large store at Ocean Terminal in Edinburgh and a new flagship store at Tullibardine, Perthshire.

We asked Mr. Finlay G. Slater project engineer of Baxters Food Group to reveal us the secret of such long-term success and which role the technological investment has for the company that is able to blend quality with tradition and innovation.

“Baxters Food Group is successful for three main reasons:

  1. it has one of the best development kitchens in the industry, which includes our own resident chefs, cooks, technologists and scientists.
  2. the company is good at turning that into manufactured products.
  3. it has an unwavering commitment to high quality products.

To ensure that we remain successful and reach our planned growth target of £300m turnover by the year 2019, it is essential that we not only continue to utilise the assets above but we also need to invest in new operations/equipment to make our production facilities as modern, efficient and future-proof as possible”.

How do you value your potential technological partners?

“When we decided to upgrade our end of line soup pack palletising equipment, which had been operational for 20 years plus we contacted a number of companies that offer palletising equipment. We discovered GEA Procomac Packaging could offer equipment that met all our criteria:

  1. competitive on price;
  2. compact design and layout of equipment which would facilitate future redevelopments of other areas of our soup production department;
  3. the palletisers have the facility to be upgraded in the future to run at much higher line speeds;
  4. the equipment is less labour dependent;
  5. Health & Safety requirements.

How do you value the service of GEA Procomac Packaging?

“The timescale from initial enquiry to the required installation date was very short and GEA Procomac Packaging were able to convince Baxters Food Group that they could achieve the build in such a short leadtime. The project required the removal of the old palletisers and the installation of 2 palletisers Opera 1000 and associated conveyors within a 2 week window during our summer shutdown period. The project was successfully completed and commissioned on time and within budget. Although the palletisers have only been installed for a couple of months, in that time they have already contributed to the record daily production outputs of our soup department. As for the future, we have already asked GEA Procomac Packaging to provide Baxters Food Group with quotations for a number of other projects”.