The Belgian family business Vandemoortele produces frozen bakery products as well as margarine, culinary oils and fats. The owner-managed company has added more than 4,500 different products to its range since it was founded in 1899. The largest German production facility of the internationally active group, which employs 5,200 people worldwide, is located in Dommitzsch in northern Saxony. With 200 employees, the site is the largest employer in the area. Baguettes, bread rolls, pretzels and ciabatta are produced on five production lines in four-shift operation for the food service, bakery and food retail sectors. Deep-freezing ensures that the products reach the consumer's plate fresh.

"Consumers demand added value"
Customer requirements and employee needs have changed over the last few years, says Robert Maaßen, Country Commercial Manager Germany and Austria. "Society determines the market - classic bread rolls are dead. Consumers today don't just want bread or rolls, they want a good feeling; the keyword is superfood. Healthy. Vital. That's how baked goods should be today." Vandemoortele is therefore constantly optimizing its product portfolio.

The trend is developing towards creating new products together with the company's own wholesale and retail customers: "In the future, I see specialties rather than mass production for baked goods. In the end, the consumer also wants to taste this added value in the bread roll," added Maassen.

On the other hand, the management team is faced with an ageing workforce. Young people from rural areas are moving to the cities. Hardly anyone is settling permanently in and around Dommitzsch. Taken together, these two areas pose new challenges for the production site: The quantities per batch are getting smaller. The number of variants will increase in the future with the development of further specialties. As a result, packaging and shipping will become more complex and the workload for employees will increase.

Employee health comes first
Due to the increased workload, the health of employees is a top priority for management. Both in logistics and in production. In logistics, Vandemoortele has relied on industrial trucks from Toyota Material Handling since 1996. A total of ten trucks are used at the Dommitzsch site. In addition to the classic forklift truck, Vandemoortele uses reach trucks from the Toyota BT Reflex series as cold storage versions. At temperatures as low as minus 24 degrees Celsius, the trucks are used under the toughest conditions. However, Toyota's industrial trucks not only provide support in logistics, they are also intended to make work in production easier.

The HWE100 with automatic height adjustment has recently been put into operation. Behind it is an electric pallet truck from the BT Staxio series. Vandemoortele was looking for a tool that would make the work of the employees in production more ergonomic. In one production step, a mixture of ingredients for the baked goods is lifted - and then manually poured into a hopper. Previously, production employees had to lift the packets, which weighed around 25 kilograms, to the required height themselves. An effort that is hard on the body. This often resulted in employees being absent due to illness.

Today, the pallet truck supports the lifting process and thus ensures ergonomic working. Thanks to the automatic height adjustment via photocell, the pallet is always moved to the correct height - without readjustment. This eliminates the need to overcome the height. as