Using the VR250 Line with the Rest Conveyor and FE Line
A Rapidly Growing South Korean Company Installs Rheon Lines “Making the best bread with the best equipment”
Fiore Food Bakery (Korea)
Fiore Food Bakery has garnered attention in South Korea as a company experiencing rapid growth. Mainly producing pastries and bread and wholesaling them to convenience stores, it posted about 14 billion KRW in yearly sales in 2019, with the highest sales in the dessert category of South Korea’s largest convenience store chain. Company founder and President Yo-hwan Mun is a specialist who worked on the ground as a bread-making expert for over 30 years. In 2019, he installed a Rheon-made bread-making system.
Expanding the FIORE Brand into New Product Categories
In 1988, President Mun took over the bakery business from his parents. After initially being contracted as an OEM producer for the tourist city of Gunsan-si, he cultivated a market with his high-quality bread-making. He then moved his base of operations to Buan-gun, with a population of about 54,000, and established Ginko Food Bakery, which mass produces bread for retailers. But after realizing that this wasn’t enough to make him optimistic about his prospects, he founded Fiore Bakery. By introducing high-quality sweets and bread products to the convenience stores rapidly expanding throughout South Korea, he aimed to establish a new customer base focused on young people. Both companies then opened new factories, and installed cutting-edge equipment from around the world for producing bread and sweets. They also earned HACCP certification. For sales, President Mun himself visited the headquarters of major convenience store chains. With its advanced technology, development capabilities, and the ability to execute proposals in speedy fashion, Fiore succeeded in supplying its items to convenience stores whose shelves were lined with products from major companies. It also introduced a new product category that had never before existed in South Korea: chilled convenience store desserts.
Nowadays, the company is widely known for producing hit products.
Installation of a Rheon-made bread-making system
In an effort to place more emphasis on Fiore’s bakery business, President Mun installed Rheon’s “VR250 Line with the Rest Conveyor” and the FE Line breadmaking system in October 2019. “Since installation, we have been able to achieve stable production of a variety of items with only two workers by combining the strengths of machinery and personnel,” he said. “It’s hygienic, with little risk of foreign substances getting mixed in. The cleaning is also much more convenient than when we were using another company’s lines.”
Currently, the system operates 10 hours a day, six days a week. It mainly produces 13 varieties of sweet bean paste buns (eight wrapped sweet bean paste bun varieties and five varieties consisting only of divided dough). The president explained: “The ‘Stress-Free System VR250 Line’ is a bread-making system for producing various bread products from rounded dough. It efficiently forms dough balls with the same quality as handmade ones. The FE Line also uses a method close to hand-wrapping. By keeping the dough and fillings gentle, this bread-making system enhances Fiore’s strengths, allowing us to achieve both expanded variety and higher quality.”
Those strengths are product development capability and speed. No expense is spared for capital expenditures, and effort focuses on creating optimal line structures. “For small and midsize firms to survive, they must be able to read the needs of the changing market, prepare the best equipment and environment, and produce the best products,” the president added. “High-performance production equipment not only increases your ability to compete based on quality, but also ensures stable personnel recruitment and improves Fiore’s overall brand strength, leading to community revitalization as well. I have high expectations for Rheon going forward.”
In 2019, the president received an award granted to those who have had a positive effect on the local economy in South Korea. President Mun said he wants to prove that regional companies can represent South Korea if they have enough passion. The day he achieves this surely cannot be far off.
