OLAM Tomato Processors, California

05/10/2011

Lauras International is currently assisting OLAM Tomato Processors at their Williams plant in California on a continuous improvement journey to enable them to meet demanding targets. 39 million tonnes of tomatoes are processed worldwide every year. Global farming challenges, climate change, and the fact that the tomato is emerging as a super food, current annual growth is around 1 million tonnes which is a direct consequence of consumer trends.

The business is capacity-constrained, the challenge being to process and pack as many tomatoes as possible during peak harvesting, typically 84 days.

The Williams team have been trained in the core improvement tools, and are applying them to rapidly increase performance. One of the key observations by the senior team has been the engagement of the workforce who is demonstrating a motivated can-do attitude and is achieving significantly improved performance across key canning lines with half the season yet to go.

The continuous improvement initiative is currently being rolled out across other sites.