- Tell us about Gullón. What is your core business and role within the project?
Gullón is a biscuit company with more than 125 years of experience located in the north of Spain, which has two factories, more than 1600 employees on staff, exports to more than 120 countries around the world, and which today continues to expand your business.
Our company is characterized by betting on continuous innovation both at the level of technology and infrastructure, as well as at the level of manufacturing processes and design of healthy products. Always keeping in mind the well-being of your employees.
Within ECOFACT, Gullón is a demonstration company that actively participates in the project.
- Why did your organisation get involved in the ECOFACT project? How does this activity fit with the normal business of your organisation?
Among the main projects of Gullón is the digitization of the plant in general and the advance towards the world of Industry 4.0.
ECOFACT fits in perfectly with the established roadmap. This new way of approaching the collection, recording and analysis of data in the industry, allows optimizing the production process at different levels, while facilitating the employees’ operations and allowing the joint work of all the departments that make up the company. , thanks to the dynamism offered by this type of technology.
Gullón saw in ECOFACT an opportunity for growth in this regard.
- How will the outputs of the ECOFACT project help production system energy performance?
With the results obtained from the project, new developments can be made fully aligned with Gullón’s ultimate goal. This is none other than the optimization of the activities and services of the plant, through the digitization and automation of all the parts that compose it.
One of the main costs associated with the production process is the expenditure on energy, both electricity and from the combustion of natural gas. Therefore, reducing energy consumption is an advance in the economic and social aspect of the company, which promotes sustainability.
- What are the technical challenges your work in ECOFACT is trying to overcome?
Despite the fact that we have a very new fully equipped plant, and this in any case facilitates the development of the activities required for the development of ECOFACT, it should be noted that it is a complex project that involves the entire company and requires a great infrastructure for its achievement.
Currently in the initial phase we are immersed in the study of needs and services that we want to cover, and design of elements and necessary means. In the second phase of the project, this analysis will be put into practice.
- What positive impacts will the projects have when complete?
Once the project is finished, we hope to be able to continue with the evolution towards a more automated plant, to exploit this technology in the lines involved and to extend it to the rest of the production lines of our company.
Thanks to digital evolution, we hope to be able to study possible deviations not currently contemplated, locate their origin and minimize them as much as possible. In other words, we hope to be able to optimize our production process in different fields.
6. Can you tell us an interesting fact about your factory or the products you produce?
Aguilar de Campoo is a biscuit town of birth, since it is located in a favorable area in terms of climate and obtaining raw materials. In this small town, 5 cookie factories operated at the same time. Today Gullón is a benchmark, a national leader and a powerhouse in the sector at a European level.
