Introduction

The debate as to what is or is not a snack food has raged for many years. Surveys have suggested that the snack food category encompasses sandwiches, fish and chips, and other take-away foods, as well as potato crisps, chocolate bars, sweets, and other confectionery. Whatever is included under this heading, the prime driving force is the change in life styles created by increasing consumer affluence. Different products have been considered as ‘snacks’ in different parts of the world at different times, indeed, what is an ‘ethnic’ food in one country can now be viewed as a ’snack’ food in another as exposure to different cultures is facilitated by cheaper air travel.

Baker Perkins Holdings’ Market Research Unit (see also The Holdings Building ) carried out detailed market surveys on the opportunity for snack food machinery in the USA and Europe in 1973/74. This took as its reference point that a ‘snack food’, in the context of Baker Perkins’ interests, would be one that is cooked in some way, produced under industrial conditions, and would be packaged in individual ‘snack’ quantities for sale primarily through similar retail outlets to those used for biscuits and sugar confectionery. The survey included potato crisps but this opportunity was dismissed fairly early in the work as Baker Perkins did not have expertise in frying and the potential growth in the market did not justify acquiring this technology. One particular product did however figure in the research, a new product called Pringles – a ‘pre-fabricated’ potato crisp (or as the Americans call them – ‘potato chips”) - was just entering the market. This led to an examination of a new generation of snack foods that were produced using the, then, new technology of cooker-extrusion – usually in a fairly simple single screw extruder.

Although at the time of the survey, the snacks being produced in this way were relatively crude, the market potential was very significant in both the developed and developing worlds. These new foods were competing for the same portion of an individual’s ‘food consumption dollar’ as was being spent on biscuits and confectionery, so the growth of cooker extruders could therefore threaten future sales of the group’s existing range of equipment. The survey suggested that there was a market for a better single screw extruder but that the rapid growth of consumption would lead to the development of new snack products that would need a more sophisticated twin screw device.

In 1979 the decision was taken that the group should develop a suitable range of equipment to meet both of these opportunities. Baker Perkins already possessed significant experience of extrusion through its involvement in plastics compounding (See History of Baker Perkins in the Chemical Business ) and it was decided that Baker Perkins Ltd at Peterborough should develop a new single screw extruder while Baker Perkins Inc, Saginaw (later in Raleigh and Goldsboro) would use their existing range of plastics/chemical machines as a basis on which to build a new twin-screw model. The snack food business was, therefore, one of the youngest businesses in the Baker Perkins group but one which grew rapidly.

Here we are reminded by Peter Hornsby - a member of the original 1950s Baker Perkins Plastics Machinery team - that "back in 1960/61 in the then Experimental Department while working on a new product range of Plastic Extruders we were asked by our Sales Department if we could run a test for Kelloggs and attempt to extrude cereals. Kellogg's personnel arrived and ingredients were fed into the machine hopper. However the extruder screw proved to have too high a compression ratio and because the feed stock was too viscous, it blew the die head off the extruder barrel and covered all present with exploding product. Experimental trials often fail and we never got another chance to enter a new market".