Food processing equipment supplier GEA has integrated Italian business COMAS, a move that strengthens its diversification into the bakery sector.
Since the acquisition of COMAS, which took place in June this year, GEA has been integrating its businesses into the Solutions units of GEA to play an important role in cake and pastry sector of the company's business.
For GEA, bakery is a new segment and the acquisition has bolstered its position in terms of an expanded portfolio that is inclusive of a new set of equipment. With the inclusion of bakery technology equipment in its supply sphere, the company hopes to offer turnkey solutions from a single source for its food industry clientele.
COMAS has been a bakery sector specialist since 1972 and has grown to become a supplier of production equipment for varied bakery segments such as cakes, pies, cookies, layer cakes, pastry, pizza and bread.
Through the acquisition, COMAS will be able to capitalize on the GEA Food Application Center, along with GEA's vast sales and support network worldwide, to discover new opportunities for technology and provide high level expertise and flexibility to customers.
The acquisition will help one important aspect being provided by GEA - Bakery Experience Center (BEC), which is located in Torrebelvicino. The center conducts tests on new recipes on behalf of its clients and facilitates to optimize process for quality and throughput.
The BEC is equipped with a broad range of bakery production equipment such as mixers, depositors, filling machines, pizza topping machines, ovens and packaging equipment. The facility also features an experienced food technologist service, which intends to provide guidance to clients at each stage of food testing process. The BEC is also used for product development and for testing of the machinery that leaves the factory premises before delivery.
COMAS marketing manager Andrea Filippi said: "The BEC is very popular with our customers. It allows us to prove the quality and efficiency of our production lines for customers and enables them to develop new products and bring them to market quickly.
"Recently we have helped a baker to develop a new cake production line to boost throughput while maintaining, or even improving product quality. Similarly, a confectionery customer, who wanted to diversify into bakery products, was able to test ingredients, recipes and production processing at the BEC before investing in new plant."
Recently, GEA acquired CMT S.p.A., a supplier of single equipment and integrated production lines for pasta filata cheese, in order to capitalize on the growing sector of cheese processing. This acquisition consolidated its position in cheese processing category with its previous acquisition of de Klokslag, which has been acquired in 2014. de Klokslag is a supplier of large scale equipment for semi-hard cheese production in Europe.
Image: GEA diversifies into bakery sector. Photo: Courtesy of GEA Group.
