We Are Recruiting…

We are recruiting…

If you share our passion for a Food and Drink manufacturing excellence, join our team and help us make a difference.

 

Protolan believes in new talent.

We are constantly looking for the next generation of talent to keep Protolan at its best.

We want people with fresh ideas, fueled with passion, who ultimately want a career in the food and drink industry.

Who Are We?

Protolan aims to solve the challenges that Food and Drink manufacturers encounter by applying our expertise and knowledge.  We deliver multi-faceted capital projects resolving equipment, process, building, and engineering challenges for our diverse and unique clients.

Take a look at our Success Stories

Our team is at the heart of everything we do.  We are a close-knit, innovative, and technical team, known not only for our specialist solutions but also our approach to business and delivering projects.

Meet the Team

Working in a fast-paced, dynamic environment, we will support you to develop through training and learning opportunities.  We want our team to feel valued and rewarded, so offer a competitive package and excellent benefits.

Who Are We Looking For?

If you are passionate about food and drink, ambitious, dedicated, and interested in working in a dynamic, motivated, and fast-paced working environment, then we would love to talk to you.

We would really enjoy discussing the personal and career development available at Protolan within the broad range of opportunities we offer.

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Get in touch here
Email direct to theteam@protolan.com

 

We Are Hiring – Project Engineers & Project Managers

We are hiring Project Engineers and Project Managers to support our ambition to deliver food manufacturing excellence.

Take a look at the job description and if this is you, please email your CV with a covering letter to:

theteam@protolan.com

The Role

The core of this role is the desire to deliver world-leading production facilities and processes for the top food manufacturers within the UK and global markets.

Whether this is improvements to existing production, new product delivery, new market capacity or whole new manufacturing facilities the drive to provide your key skills to the customer is uppermost. You are therefore passionate about food manufacturing excellence.

Responsibilities include:

 Leading multi-disciplinary teams of professionals in project delivery:

  • Liaising with Client management and work teams
  • Undertaking technical governance
  • Managing challenging timelines, budgets and standards throughout the project lifecycle
  • Note that a high degree of travel is required to perform our role

Can you display…

  • Outstanding project management capabilities (i.e. estimating and planning, risk management, status reporting, budget tracking, benefits analysis, stakeholder management and communication, resource management)
  • Strong operation/engineering or related track record preferably in an FMCG environment
  • Strong communication and interpersonal skills with an ability to listen, and convey complex issues concisely and accurately and build effective working relationships
  • Excellent analytical skills; the ability to assess problems thoroughly and drive logical conclusions
  • Energy, enthusiasm, curiosity and common sense
  • Assertiveness and a readiness to challenge teams to take remedial action when required
  • Good working knowledge of Microsoft office suite (use of MS Projects an advantage)
  • Good working knowledge of AutoCAD (desirable)

We would require a minimum of 3 years similar project-based experience in the food or similar industry.

Capacity Planning, Project Management – Hotel Chocolat

Capacity Planning, Project Management & Project Engineering to scope and install a new chocolate moulding line within Hotel Chocolat’s Hadley Park Facility.

The Challenge

With an aspiration to increase throughput and capacity planning and improve consistency whilst considering resourcing requirements ongoing at their Hadley Park facility; Hotel Chocolat partnered with Protolan to deliver the installation of a new chocolate moulding circuit.

Delivering Success

To support the ongoing capacity of the factory Protolan removed an existing moulding line and relocated equipment to create a new one.

Capability included mould warming, decoration, filling, cooling, de-moulding, robotic product pack placement and in-line product wrapping. In conjunction with capability we optimised the line volumetrically by installing a stainless platform enabled the cooling process to be created on a first-floor level.

To ensure full automation capability, an optimised mould re-design was implemented, and a new flow wrapper was installed to deliver maximum production flexibility and efficiency.

Main challenges:

1) Ensuring the robotic “product to pack” process was streamlined because of the range in product size and design.
2) The project took place within a live working environment and it was imperative that there was no disruption to ongoing output

Alongside the project a new “future proofed” mould wash facility was created to support site and capacity expansion (included civils alternations as well as construction).

Services Delivered

Project Management | Project Engineering | Food Capacity Planning

Food Production Review for New Ready Meals Factory

Food Production Review for New Ready Meals Factory
The Project

Food production review for multi-million-pound scheme to deliver manufacturing excellence for a new Ready Meals Factory in Texas, USA.

The Challenge

With the development of a new factory in Texas, our client required a comprehensive production review to ensure capacity planning, process flows, and equipment
procurement to be able to meet the specific requirement of their customers.

Delivering Success

Protolan applied a four-stage process including feasibility, design and procurement, implementation, and commissioning. Our project engineers worked alongside our client to co-ordinate front-end capacity work which enabled a process flow model to be interactive and specifically identify bottlenecks. Equipment specification comprised of the selection, coordination, delivery and installation and commissioning of all preparation, cooking, cooling, packaging and ancillary equipment to ensure the customer had all elements necessary to launch a high volume, multi-component ready meals process.

Protolan delivered a multifaceted approach utilising 3D modelling to ensure that specialist process equipment procured from the United States, Canada, Germany, Italy and UK were all coordinated, delivered, installed and commissioned within the facility.

Protolan advised on building and infrastructure to ensure best practice hygienic design across the factory.

We delivered a full package service including:

This successful project is now operational and delivering products for our client’s customers.

Food Production Capacity Increase for Morrisons

Food Production Capacity Increase

Morrisons is the UK’s 2nd largest fresh food manufacturer with 18 sites across the country. To ensure they continue to offer fresh food at a great value, they sought to increase food production capacity and develop technologically advanced, efficient and labour reducing facilities at their root vegetable production sites in Gadbrook and Rushden.

The Challenge

Morrisons goal was to increase capacity across root vegetable production at Gadbrook (as an initial phase), followed by a second phase at Rushden to consolidate potato packing from three packing facilities to two, whilst improving finished pack quality.

Delivering Success

Protolan has worked with Morrisons on several projects.

To deliver these schemes, Protolan was recruited to supply Food Project Management, Food Project Engineering and Food Capacity Planning.

We led both projects and worked closely with the management team involved to scope, procure, implement and commission the building and equipment through Workstream Management Project Process.

Protolan managed the removal of all existing process equipment and the redevelopment of the buildings resulting in a higher specification (including strip out and installation).

The end to end replacement of all process equipment delivered:

  • Potato conditioning by individual load
  • Washing equipment with optional use of a potato polisher
  • Optical grading to remove 98% of rejects and size grade the raw material (using 4k camera technology)
  • Automated delivery and storage of graded, washed raw material with automated delivery to the packing process (this was the first of its kind in the UK)
  • Packing lines with grading, weighing and Vertical Form Fill Seal and bulk packing capabilities
  • Checkweighers (linked to weigher for automated control of weights)

The projects had their similarities, but specific differences included:

  • New Waste Water Treatment Plant at Gadbrook recycling 90% of all process water
  • Upgrade to existing Waste Water Treatment Plant at Rushden
  • Raw material grading of off-field material at Rushden
  • First pass optical grading to eliminate 95% of material defects ahead of secondary optical grading process of 98% Rushden to eliminate all manual grading operations.

Both projects were a success, delivered to budget and on time to hit the site peak volume period of Christmas

Delivering Value to the Food Industry

New capital projects, in the food industry, are happening every day.

Each project starts with the ambition to add value to the business, delivering food manufacturing excellence.

With the food manufacturing industry becoming the largest industry in the world, the pressure is on to become more competitive, innovative, streamlined and efficient. Protolan has been responsible for understanding the vision of food manufacturers and delivering value to our clients, alongside the execution and delivery of the project.

We understand the impact of commercial concerns and the importance of innovation and strive to answer our client’s manufacturing challenges.

We have worked alongside our clients on a wide variety of projects.  We apply our knowledge to any stage in the project lifecycle or to the entire manufacturing process, providing strategic advice, complete project management and technical services.

We believe our expertise can support your project.
Talk to us today – no matter what your project is.