Beacon Foods has welcomed Jas Singh as operations director – the third time he has worked for the award-winning ingredients and ready-to-eat products specialist.
Jas originally joined the company 25 years ago as a shopfloor worker in its infancy and progressed to operations manager more than nine years before seeking a new challenge with Unilever.
He returned to Beacon Foods for seven years as head of operations and worked on expansion plans but opted for redundancy in 2020, during the pandemic, and went to worked for food companies nearer to his Ebbw Vale home.
Now he is back for his third spell and hopes to work until his retirement with a company he knows very well.
He said:
“When I last worked for the company, we were planning expansion which has now happened under the guidance of chairman, Edward Gough. The business has grown to what we originally envisaged and Edward was very proud to show me what had been achieved.
“With the extra capacity that we have in the factory, the business is in a great position to drive forward. We knew where the growth points were before the pandemic and now the plan has come to fruition and there is a lot of scope for development.
“We are still processing vegetables but we are doing them in so many different formats and so many different processes, and can supply even more customer bases.
“Edward has invested heavily in the factory over the last four years and, in the last six months, has made another £1.5 million investment in two cooking kettles, a bowl chopper and a sachet line to increase production capacity. It’s an exciting time for volume, growth and efficiency.
“We are also looking at ways to automate more but we will never be fully automated because we need to be flexible to meet the needs of our big customer base.
“There is real cohesion throughout the business, with everyone working together for the same goal. It’s an exciting time to be here, with customers coming to us for products because they know that we offer first class customer service with high quality bespoke ingredients ”
The company’s ingredients go into thousands of products including sandwiches, ready meals, pizzas, soups, drinks and desserts. Customers include food manufacturers, food service, coffee shops, fast food chains and the travel and hospitality industries.
