Gold Creek Foods, US | Customer story

I've been involved in food really all my life. I grew up on a chicken cattle farm. My name is Don, I am the Vice President of Operations for Gold Creek Foods. I just enjoy the manufacturing process and manufacturing food in particular. As you're looking to expand, you're looking to build a line. Cost is always important, value is important but you want equipment that your maintenance guys can maintain, they can operate. I'm a data person, so I ask for a lot of data, a lot of information and the GEA team was able to provide that. I think it starts with Eric Johnston, who is our account manager/sales representative. I've known Eric for probably going on 30 years now. I think we did our first business deal on a napkin, sitting at a bar somewhere. Gold Creek is not a big company so we're not one of the bigger multi-billion-dollar poultry companies so when we invest our capital, we have to do it very wisely. Gold Creek has performed two line expansions within the last year. We bought the CookStars over other ovens for a couple of reasons. The CookStar provides a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to deliver the appearance of the product we want the quality of the product we want. It's able to deliver the volume or the throughput we want to run down the line. The three-zone cooking is really beneficial when you're running roasted items. Most roasted filets your customer wants have quite a bit of color development. With both towers and the impingement section in the middle you're really able to deliver a high-quality, very moisture high-yielding item while also delivering a lot of color enhancement. On breaded items, product maintains its juiciness or it moistness on the inside while giving a very crisp, browned appearance on the outside. In today's situation or today's market labor is an ongoing, continuous challenge. That's one of the reasons we bought the GEA Triple Drum Breaders versus other drum breaders. I personally believe they're the best drum breaders in the market. They did a tremendous job of spreading the product across the full width of the belt which also helps you reduce labor. At Gold Creek we actually have two of the GEA Aerofreeze freezers. The reliability of the freezers is outstanding because Gold Creek was expanding here, I knew I could count on the GEA freezer to provide something that was very reliable, very low-maintenance and very hygienic. The equipment has performed well, GEA has provided exceptional and outstanding support and service since we've installed the equipment. GEA has been an outstanding partner to work with. We bought breaders, we bought ovens, we bought freezers. Gold Creek continues to grow and to expand. The first people to call will be Eric and we'll be looking at GEA equipment again.