Unlike other Greek commercial bakeries, E.J. Papadopoulos doesn’t pasteurize the product for an extended shelf life. That’s where the loaves are reheated up to 140°F for 20 minutes in heat-resistant packaging to reduce living mold and bacteria. That heat treatment, though, prematurely stales the products.

Rather, on its new production line in its Oinofyta bakery, located about an hour’s drive from Athens. Papadopoulos’ freshly baked loaves enter an enclosed, pressurized clean room to avoid contaminants or contact with mold spores. No one can enter except for employees in special hygienic suits.

“We cool the products in a clean room, where they are sliced, packed into a Cavanna flowwrapper and then go into a bag,” explained Eleftherios Makras, the company’s R&D director. “It’s closed in an airtight package. This ensures freshness for 30 days, so it’s a long shelf life. We use natural sourdough and vinegar to control the pH and to extend the shelf life of the products.”

From the time the bread leaves the oven until it enters a flowwrapper, the air in the clean room — the only one of its kind in Greece — is purified through filtration. Here, the air changes 20 to 110 times an hour, depending on the part of the room. In Greece, consumers expect packaged bread to be double-wrapped, and at Papadopoulos, flowwrapping and bagging are integral to extending shelf life naturally, noted Markos Revelakis, manufacturing director for the Athens-based company.

“Flowwrap packaging is used to guarantee isolation of the product from contaminants of the environment during its shelf life, and the sealing of flowwrap packs provides a much superior seal compared to premade bags,” Revelakis said. “The inner flowwrap pack is tightly sealed, keeps the product really fresh and maintains its moisture until the consumer opens it, while the outer bag with the clip helps the consumer reseal it as many times as needed.”

Before selecting the new line, Revelakis said, the company made a list of specifications, requesting that the line should be able to collect operational, process and equipment condition data to enhance efficiencies, reduce downtime, improve predictive maintenance and make real-time line adjustments to save costs.

The bakery turned to Royal Kaak, which applied its Industry 4.0 technology that connects the equipment to the cloud for monitoring the turnkey production line. Video screens throughout the bakery keep track of production. At the same time, all utilities are incorporated under one SCADA system.

“It has a lot of valuable information not only about the process and product itself, but also about the condition of the machinery so you can go back and check the trends about the condition of a drive,” Revelakis noted. “You can see everything. You name it.”

With the interconnected line, operators can identify gaps or delays in production and adjust the equipment to operate at different speeds to ensure a smooth operation while observing process limits.

“You don’t have the area manager contacting the supervisor, and the supervisor calling the maintenance department who picks up his bag of tools to see what is going on,” he said. “Now everyone has access to this central information, which is very important for operating efficiency. If there is something not right in a product, you can go back and check all of the conditions used to make it.”

Because of the high level of automation, only 13 people work on three, eight-hour shifts, six days a week on the new production line.

In fact, the line accounts for 80% of production of its highest-volume varieties to minimize changeovers. The entire process takes four hours from mixing to packaging.

In addition to being audited by AIB International for food safety and good manufacturing practices, the facility has the latest International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certifications for quality, food safety and environmental management systems. 

During the expansion, the company upgraded the bakery’s support infrastructure, including central chilled water plant, new power distribution and new compressed air plant for the entire operation. Additionally, a new Zeppelin Systems automatic ingredient handling along with sifters, entoleters and metal detection reduces labor, ensures consistency and provides greater food safety. 

Nine silos, including one 100-tonne (220,000-lb) and eight 45-tonne (99,000-lb) systems, convey wheat, rye, whole wheat flour and sugar to holding tanks for each line.

All dry ingredients are then automatically dosed into the mixer along with bulk liquids like water, liquid yeast, sunflower oil, vinegar, liquid sourdough and bread slurry. 

Kaak provides everything from mixing through cooling on this new line, which started up at full speed in April 2023. Its MDD high-speed vacuum/pressure mixer creates up to 295-kilogram (650-lb) batches every 4.5 minutes. Revelakis noted the bakery mixes to energy, not time, to create a more consistent product.

A four-pocket divider gently cuts the dough pieces, which are checkweighed to adjust the divider in real time and ensure better consistency. The extra-long moulding process creates loaves with a more consistent crumb and texture.

The pans enter a hygienically designed Kaak tray proofer for up to 75 minutes before passing through a labor-reducing robotic lidder for toast bread. No lids are used for round-top bread. The loaves bake in a versatile 120-foot tunnel oven with two burners and five zones with PLC controls and SCADA that monitor the steam, turbulence and temperature of the process. 

After robotic delidding and depanning, the bread travels on a conveyor to a dual-spiral cooler in a temperature-controlled clean room. The bakery uses a Reading Thermal Scorpion to validate the conditions of the oven and cooler.

Revelakis said the bread is quickly cooled by its own evaporation at the first spiral, but then the process is adjusted to minimize evaporation and preserve moisture in the loaves to ensure freshness and extend shelf life.

A five-axis robot then places the loaves on conveyors that feed three packaging lines, which provide ample capacity and a buffer to avoid waste at this critical juncture of the process. Each line comprises a GHD Hartmann slicer, a Cavanna flowwrapper, GHD Hartmann bagging and closing as well as CEIA metal detection.

Packaged products leave the clean room for cartoning with a case erector, prior to palletizing and stretch wrapping. Pallets are then placed in a quarantine until they are inspected and released by quality assurance technicians.

Revelakis explained that the company incorporates into each project the experience acquired and lessons learned from the installation and daily operation of its previous projects, across all sites.

“That is on top of operational common sense,” he observed.

Currently, the bakery’s operations team is initiating research on the next expansion. It’s also looking to expand its warehouse and distribution capacities. The Oinofyta site has enough land to build on, once the management greenlights the project.

“In the future, we will have an expansion of production with new products that we don’t offer today,” Revelakis pointed out. “We’re keeping our eyes open on the market to see exactly where we can expand.”

In many ways, working at the bakery is a dream job for him.

“I’m very happy to work at this company, which provides continuity to my childhood,” he explained. “And what remains the same is the confidence that consumers have, and I have, in the quality of the products we buy. For me, this is a major reason why I’m proud of working here.”

For Makras, it’s also about the people who he works with at the company.

“We always try to be the best in terms of quality, hygiene, equipment and taking care of our people, and we don’t want to lose any of this as we continue to grow,” he noted.

As the company ventures into its next 100 years, look for the Papadopoulos brand to expand in mythical proportions throughout Greece and the rest of the food world.

This article is an excerpt from the February 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Papadopoulos, click here.