NHP News Room Spring 2019 News Room FINAL | Page 8

CASE STUDY
Relieving the symptoms of insufficient
power capacity
Y
ou wake up with a sore throat. As the day progresses, a sniffle
develops. There’s no denying it. You’ve caught a cold. Prevention is
no longer an option and just like millions of Australians every year, you
turn to a trusted brand to help relieve your symptoms.
When the cold and flu season peaks each year, Nestle, the company
that produces medicated lozenges like Butter Menthol, Anticol and
Soothers, has already been working hard for months to ensure our
favourite brands are on hand when the dreaded symptoms strike.
The seasonality of its products was a key consideration when the
decision was made to relocate their production from Blacktown, New
South Wales to Campbellfield, Victoria. Timing was critical to minimise
the impact on production leading up to the winter months.
Nestle opened its first Australian office in Sydney in 1908 and has
factories in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. It is a wholly-
owned subsidiary of the Swiss based global food and beverages
company, Nestle S.A., employing more than 5,000 people in over 70
offices, factories and distributions centres strategically located across
the entire Oceania region.
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In mid-2018, Nestle announced its Blacktown site would close.
The factory manufactured Nestle’s range of medicated lozenges,
producing about 1,800 tonnes of lozenges each year. The plan was to
relocate the manufacturing of these lines to the Campbellfield factory
in Victoria, where the distribution centre is also located.
A mixing machine takes just 10 minutes to combine the ingredients
to make 180,000 sticks of Butter Menthol in a day, averaging 950 per
minute. Once moulded, the lozenges are then sent to three wrapping
machines in the final step before they are ready for distribution.
An assessment of the Campbellfield factory found that the existing
electrical supply was insufficient to deliver on the increased
manufacturing demands resulting from the closure of the Blacktown
site. Subsequently, Nestle initiated a project to update the power
capacity of its Campbellfield factory, appointing local companies
NHP and RMS Manufacturing to provide valuable technical assistance
and guidance and deliver a solution that met the power capacity
requirements and also fitted within the extremely tight seasonal
production timeline.