Opening our new pilot facility — the next big piece of our R&D machine
The facility was designed by a nuclear engineer, who also happens to be a foodie and an ex-chef
This year, we brought on a new fantastic CTO, expanded our R&D team, and moved into world-class HQ facilities including a massive test kitchen and other goodies (more on that soon!). With the new pilot facility, we add another powerful tool to our existing R&D infrastructure, enabling our organization to do more to tackle the challenges in front of us.
Enter Oskar
Oskar Lidholm started at Stockeld Dreamery in October 2021, as Process Engineer. He’s not a rocket scientist, but he is an Engineer in Nuclear Technology. So that’s close enough. He previously worked in the Forsmark nuclear power plant in Sweden, designing high-tech systems. After that, he was designing and constructing pharmaceutical factories in e.g. Sweden, Saudi Arabia, and the Netherlands.
Oskar has always been a foodie, and even worked as a chef early on in his career. So over time, he felt a strong urge to come back to the food industry, leveraging his expertise in designing production facilities. ‘It’s more compelling to help produce good food than painkillers.’
When starting at Stockeld, he was tasked with getting a new pilot production facility up and running. A pilot production facility makes it easier for a company like Stockeld to move from test kitchen scale, to industrial scale. ‘There’s a huge step in going from 1 liter cups to a 1 metric ton recipe size.’ Oskar says.
The facility, an old bakery, was empty when Oskar started. So he had to design the layout for the equipment, procuring the equipment, and making sure that everything is installed and works. The entire process was 6–9 months long.
Challenges, but we persisted
A big challenge in designing the pilot was that at that point, we hadn’t decided what exact process to use, to produce our upcoming products including a melting cheese and a sliceable cheese. This made it hard to understand what equipment to buy. Stockeld also needed approvals from the municipality for installing certain pieces of equipment (like a fat separator). And on top of that, there are huge supply chain issues on a global level, from semiconductors to bigger pieces of equipment. So stuff that used to take 8 weeks to get, now take 6 months to get. Thus, while the goal was to have the facility up and running in March 2022, it took until July 2022 to make it happen.
Throughout the entire project, Oskar worked close to the R&D team, but he had to make a lot of calls by himself. ‘In previous jobs, there were 10 people to review and approve things, but now it was all up to me to make sure everything was fine. ’I’ve been the project manager, electrician, plumber, process engineer — all of it.’
‘It’s very satisfying, looking back, that this used to be an empty space and now everything is in place and plugged in, and works. And I made it happen.’
Going forward, Oskar will train and support the R&D team on how to use the equipment. He’ll also run maintenance, and update the pilot production facility by adding additional pieces of equipment that enable the production of new types of cheeses. ‘It’s built to be flexible.’
Oskar will support different types of Stockeld products in transitioning from pilot production to full commercial scale production. ‘And we’ll also use the pilot facility to make small-scale, limited edition products. Maybe a restaurant wants a custom flavored cheese — then we could make it happen,’ Oscar concludes.
At Stockeld Dreamery, we’re impatient and ambitious when it comes to developing and launching new superior products, and that’s where a pilot facility comes in. It enables us to do more, faster.
Onwards!
