Britain’s in love with Bread – But what’s that got to do with the BIL Group?

According to The National Association of British and Irish Millers, 99.8% of British households buy bread and every day we consume over 11 million loaves!

So what is the connection between Britain’s insatiable demand for fresh bread and BIL Castors?

Providing us Briton’s with 11 million loaves a day requires a lot of industrial scale baking ( 85% of bread production takes place in large bakeries) and in turn this requires a vast number of baking trolleys and these baking trolleys require wheels – but not just ordinary wheels – the kind of wheels that can operate hour after hour in extreme heat.
This is where BIL Castors come in. The BIL group design and manufacture high quality, high reliability heat resistant castors and wheels specifically for the baking industry.

We had a conversation with Kevin Wilson – the UK Business Development & Projects Manager for the BIL Castors and Wheels division. We asked him about the Heat Resistant Bakery Wheel that makes sure us bread loving Brits get our daily bread – and pies and cakes and biscuits and…

HELLO KEVIN, FIRST OF ALL WHAT IS THE BIL GROUP?

“Well, the BIL Group has been established since 1972 and within the BIL Group we’ve got the Castors and Wheels division and Material Handling products, so we are a manufacturer of castors and wheels and material handling products”.

TELL US ABOUT THESE HEAT RESISTANT BAKERY WHEELS – HOW DID THE WHEEL COME ABOUT? WHAT DROVE THE IDEA?

“Well we’re quite strong in the food industry, it’s an industry in which lots of different high temperature wheels and castors are used, some of which are very cost effective and some of which are a lot more robust but cost more to buy. We had a customer who was buying from a rival company and he was having some issues of noise and longevity. We had a standard oven wheel but we realised they would need something better. So in conjunction with our customer and our research and production teams we developed an even more robust heat resistant oven wheel using different compounds into the mixture of the wheel” (at this point I tried to press Kevin on the super-secret compounds used but ever the professional he would not reveal) “and now we are that customers sole supplier”.

O I’M GUESSING THEY WERE QUITE PLEASED?

“Yes, especially when you consider that the customer was getting through 1800 wheels a year and now it’s down to 1100. Now not only are we their sole supplier but we now supply that same wheel to lots of manufacturers in the food industry. Just consider the time saved. If a wheel breaks on a trolley you have to take it out of circulation and that means someone has to fix it, remove the castors, that someone has to be paid, it all adds up”.

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CHOSE THE BIL GROUP?

“Well, we have some core values in the BIL group. We offer a quality product and we’re innovative. Essentially, quality, innovation, service and flexibility, we pride ourselves on those 4 things. For example, in certain ranges of castors you could have a choice of 20 wheel options depending on the environment needed. So, as well as our heat resistant bakery wheels, we’ve got castors that can lift up to 20 tonnes, castors that can go off shore and high speed castors so we’re very forward thinking. We have a CAD software team who can supply any customer with a drawing of any product we have in the catalogue and if it’s not in the library they can get it out to our customers quickly and we also have 3D printers”. So just by using a BIL group wheel you can harness the quality, innovation, service and flexibility that comes from being at the cutting edge for almost 50 years while saving time and expense. And it was all driven by listening to a customer and using that experience in quality and design to innovate. But it turns out that the BIL group are not just manufacturers of Super Heat Resistant Bakery Wheels (and material handling products) they are also in the music and show biz Kevin revealed. “We actually supply a very famous studio with staging equipment and some of our wheels were used at the BRIT awards“. Though I couldn’t resist asking Kevin one more time about the secret ingredient in the super heat resistant bakery wheels. Was it gold? Silver? Finally, Kevin cracked “All I can really tell you is it’s an Epoxy resin compound”. And so this is the connection between the BIL Group and your daily bread. (Or cake or pie or biscuits …!)

For more details on the BIL Castors heat resistant bakery oven wheels you can contact Kevin on 01249 822 222. Or email sales@bilgroup.co.uk.