Ready-made meals

The situation before ActiMeat

Sophie, Buyer
for an international food group

There is tension in the market – retailers want lower prices, but they don’t want lower-quality products and to damage their images. I have already gone through my portfolio of suppliers again and none of them can meet my requirements as regards improvement. What can you bring to the table as regards our flagship frozen product, shepherd’s pie?

Currently, this product is made using European beef and aromatic ingredients cooked in a pot. Once it has cooled down, the cooked meat is shredded, and then mixed with a few vegetables and condiments when warm. The preparation is put into containers in the right quantity as the first layer, on the production line, before the potato mash layer, and then the product as a whole is frozen using a mechanical refrigeration system.

ActiMeat was consulted about a range of ready meals as regards this leading recipe in the catalogue of a major manufacturer, with a view to supplying it with 1,500 tonnes.

actimeat‘s solution

Optimisation
of production costs

ActiMeat provided a
«confidential» approach, whereby
it would reduce costs overall by
going over all the production
stages with the client.

By reducing production operations,
by remedying intermediary raw material
waste, by increasing the production
rate, by reducing energy
costs, etc. The result was a 9% drop
in the overall cost price without
lowering the quality of the meat.

Product
flavours innovation

The innovation resides in
simultaneous cooking of the
meat, the vegetables and of
the natural favourings, without
the raw materials losing their
structures.

Cooking juices from the raw
materials mix with each other,
resulting in unparalleled spreading
of cooking flavours and an
appetising product appearance.
A taste test procedure which
constitutes approval if passed has
been put in place as regards each
batch, in order that the product be
checked in conjunction.

Product yield
and packaging

The ready-to-use ingredient is
IQF frozen, which means that
ingredient dosing takes place
when it is cold, without any waste
taking place on the production
line, and this also enables the
product freezing speed to be
increased.

The procedure incorporates packing
of the raw material into bags with
easy-to-open mechanisms, the
sizes of which are in line with the
sizes of the production batches the
manufacturer wants to produce.
The availability in inventory of raw
materials in line with scheduled
deliveries also enables the service
level for this product to be improved.