I’m in Bangkok this week for my Entrepreneur Organization Forum Retreat. Part of our retreat is a learning experience. Where we take the opportunity to visit an entrepreneur and learn all about his business, his struggles and his industry.
This trip we visited Mr Soh Chee Yong, the President of Creamo (the 3rd largest ice-cream player in Thailand). Mr Soh told us his story and gave us a factory tour.
1) It all starts with COOKING
Yes that’s the word he used to describe it. This is the kitchen. There are huge cauldrons and woks there where the ice-cream is mixed together and cooked. If you lychee or coconut or chocolate flavor ice-cream then some flavoring or the real thing is added in. The end result is some sort of a paste.
2) The paste is aged…. just like wine or beef.
Once the cooking is done they’re all cooled down and kept in these huge tanks for aging. They age them for 24 hour or so to let the ingredients all settle down before they go on to the next step.
3) The paste is squeezed on to the cups or cones.
If you look at the bottom right of the picture, you’ll see a conveyor belt with trays on them. If you look closely these trays all have ice-cream cones on them with the paste just freshly squeezed in them but not yet frozen. The workers then take the cones out of the tray manually and then put it on to the bigger blue trays you see on the upper right. Those blue trays go on a conveyor belt that takes them into this huge refrigerator. The journey through this refrigerator takes one hour before it comes out from the other side. By then it’s frozen.
4) The conveyor belt then takes it to the end of the line for packing
Workers then pack everything and ship them out.
On the left side of this picture you’ll see packing going on for not the cones but the big ice-cream tubs. That ice-cream is made the same way as the cones except that you don’t need the machinery to squeeze the paste on to each cone. So there is a mixer that squeezes all the paste into the tub and then freezes it and off for packing. These big tubs normally go to restaurant chains like the big steamboat chain in Thailand that is a long time client of Creamo.
5) Storing ice-cream is expensive
This huge building above is not just any warehouse. It’s their warehouse for storing ice-cream. Mr Soh told us that the challenge in the ice-cream business is that the longer you take to sell your product the more expensive it becomes for you because of the refrigeration costs to keep it frozen.
6) There are a number of entrances and exits to this big fridge
Inside it was buzzing with workers and forklifts moving stock around. All of them with winter jackets on and some covering their faces with cloth. The temperature? -20 degrees celcius.
7) Like any warehouse all the ice-cream is stacked as high as possible
We decided to take a picture in the warehouse. I very cleverly decided to go visit an ice-cream factory in shorts and paid the price for it that moment. If I had a lesser powerful camera I think the picture might have been blurry from all my shivering. So that’s it everyone. That’s how ice-cream is made in an ice-cream factory.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space