BREAD! Dowson Food Machinery

Dowson Food Machinery was established in Yorkshire in 1982 under the skilled entrepreneurship of founder John Murgatroyd. John began work as an engineer for Rolls Royce before joining Hugh Steepler in Leeds, where he was tasked with manufacturing comb plates and slicer frames for the bakery industry.

He set about designing new products for slicing and bagging bread, and before long was supplying bespoke equipment and service support to many of the UK’s leading bakery groups, as well as to smaller independent and artisan bakers.

Dowson had established a reputation for providing quality British engineering solutions to some complex bakery challenges; their machines becoming the leading standard for the industry with their engineering excellence and renowned reliability.

Now run by Managing Director Nick Lacey, the company exports across the five continents and has machines installed at many of the UK’s leading bakery groups such as Warburtons and Hovis.

The success of the business meant that expansion was inevitable and in 2015 they moved to a new 48,000 sq ft facility in Bradford, nearly three times the size of the original factory.

Now employing 60 people and with the space for more equipment, new lines were designed to include products for speciality breads, flatbreads, rolls and tortillas.

Their main asset today, is in-house CNC machining capability. “We offer more than our competitors,” explains James Carson, Sales and Marketing Manager. “To have our own Haas machines on-site is not only economical, it gives us a level of control over quality and lead-time which we would never have by out-sourcing.

We can alter or modify a component to change the way a piece of equipment works, then test it straight away in-house. 90% of components for our products are now manufactured at the Dowson factory.”