Kirsty's

In 2010, Lancashire mum and founder of Kirsty’s , Kirsty Henshaw, appeared on Dragons Den and won the hearts and minds of the nation but more importantly the backing of Dragon Peter Jones.

Kirsty’s now supply a range of healthy gluten and dairy free ready meals to the retail sector. The range was developed in response to Kirsty discovering that her son was not only allergic to nuts but also intolerant of both gluten and dairy.

The Challenge: Developing Kirsty’s manufacturing facility

When Kirsty’s decided to move away from a third-party packaging company with a view to opening their own facility to supply and manufacture the meals themselves, Packaging Automation came highly recommended from a number of sources and were the natural choice.

The Solution: Eclipse SL2 and filling conveyor

Kirsty’s were looking for a small inline machine with filling conveyor to give them as much automation as possible on a small footprint. The requirement was to seal ready meals at a rate of 36 packs per minute and also integrate the line with a Riggs depositor using one of our chain and peg filling conveyors.

The solution was the Eclipse SL2 automatic tray sealer and filling conveyor.

The Result: New facility setup

Kirsty’s new facility is now up and running enabling them to start supplying the supermarkets direct.

Kirsty's commented: "After spending over 30 years in Senior roles in the Food industry with Geest, Bakkavor, Cranswick and Tonnies, in that time being involved in projects and capital spend to the tune of hundreds of millions of pounds,

I am well positioned and qualified to make an accurate assessment of any machinery manufacturer/equipment provider on service, price, and overall performance.

In respect of Packaging Automation PA I must say the equipment performance is excellent the technology is industry leading and very robust. The after-sales service support is the Best I have ever experienced in many years and I would described it like an extension of our onsite Engineering team and the project support, commissioning, installation is seamless and very reassuring everytime.

I have purchased/installed successfully numerous full line systems from Packaging Automations on varied product manufacturing sites, without any issues or project delays.

Their lead times are one of the best in the industry for full packaging line assemblies to tooling conversion etc.

I can highly recommend Packaging Automation for any high-speed packaging solutions or complex product assembly processes.

Neil, Dan and the team must be very proud of what they have built. "