Pepperidge Farm received the 2004 Plant of the Year award April 20 during Food Engineering’s Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference. Left to right: FE Editor in Chief Joyce Fassl and the Pepperidge Farm honorees: Manager, Systems Engineering Manager Harry Pettit, Project Manager Glenn Wright, Project Engineer Marta Mulyk and Vice President, Engineering Dave Watson.

The new Bloomfield plant outputs 30 percent more than its predecessor with three lines instead of four and produces 28 varieties of fresh bread daily.

Major plant innovations include the first North American installation of high-speed horizontal flow wrappers that can package 100 loaves of bread a minute and a space-saving three-tier rack system for pans, which features robotics and an automatic storage/retrieval crane managing returns and staging pans for upcoming production runs.

In the 23-year history of the award, it is the first time any food or beverage company has won the award twice. The Pepperidge Farm plant in Denver, PA also received Food Engineering's plant of the year award in 1992.