Bakers Delight’s ovens go green

Bakers Delight’s move towards sustainability began five years ago, and the first initiative was to develop ‘green’ ovens that were more fuel efficient than their predecessors, based on the historical oven from the 1950s.

The company’s General Manager, Gerry Gerrard, said the ovens use most of the energy in a typical bakery. Each bakery was spending around $15,000 to $20,000 a year on electricity bills; the ovens making up three quarters of this bill. “You can imagine that with 700 bakeries doing this each day, the cost across all bakeries was around $10 million a year in electricity alone,” says Gerrard. In 2006, Bakers Delight began working Moffat Ovens to develop an exclusive oven that would maintain various heat levels required for the numerous bread products the bakery produces each day.

In the old oven, the insulation factors meant that the temperature loss was significant each time the oven door was opened and as a result the oven had to reheat itself back to the ideal temperature. This action alone took up more energy and therefore cost. Each chamber in the Green Oven had to be fully insulated so that when the oven doors were open, the temperature remained. Also, the viewing window was clearer and yet smaller, therefore reducing heat escape. “These are important aspects when considering electricity consumption, because without resolving these issues, you will not be able to reduce your carbon footprint.”

Unlike the old ovens that were operated manually, the Green Oven is computer driven to assist the baker. Different products require varied baking temperatures (for example, Pana Di Casa is baked at 200°C whereas a Turkish Loaf is baked at 250°C) and whereas the old oven the baker would simply allow for each chamber to be correctly heated, the Green Oven will tell the baker which chamber to put the next product into because this chamber is now temperature-ready. “This results in a better baked product for our customers as well as using less power to get to ideal temperatures - a win all round,” says Gerrard.