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An Era comes to an End
On January 24th, 2008 eighty years of potato chip manufacturing on Chicago's south side will come to a close with the public auction sale of equipment from Jays Foods manufacturing headquarters on East 99th Street. This announcement follows the bankruptcy court's acceptance of a $24.8 million bulk sale of the majority of the firms assets to another party.
The Jays brand has always been considered a quality snack product throughout Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Minnesota and Iowa. Unfortunately, even with a 60% market share in the ready-to-eat popcorn category in these states, Jays flagship manufacturing plant could not offset the rising costs of cooking oils, raw materials, energy, and labor costs - all while competing with snack food giant Frito Lay (which has nearly 70% market share nationwide).
The equipment auction is being conducted by Rabin Worldwide of San Francisco and is open to the public. The auction will include batch frying systems utilized to make the Krunchers kettle style chips, four continuous fry lines which produced the bulk of Jays regular & barbeque potato chips, two popcorn systems which were recently producing the famous O-Ke-Doke popcorns, as well as 18 Ishida packaging machines.
We highlight a few of the many lots of the auction below.
Heat and Control batch frying equipment
The auction includes 5 Heat and Control batch frying systems, previously used by Jay's to produce their Krunchers Kettle Style potato chips. These batch frying systems typically consist of 2 Heat and Control BF-180 fryers with BF-stir with an Urschel model CC slicer mounted on the travelling frame, an oil storage tank, a filter, fire extinguisher systems and roof mounted exhaust fans.
4 continuous potato chips production lines
The auction includes four continuous chips processing lines with equipment such as Salvo fryers, Urschel model CC slicers, mostly mounted on potato chips washers and Van Mark potato peelers (7 brushes), destoners and metering hoppers.
Popcorn popping lines, Tortilla production line
The auction includes two popcorn popping lines (Cretors, 1000 and 650 lbs/h) with Flo-Thru hot air popper, Flo-Thru rotary sifter and Hance model 175S stainless steel bucket elevator with associated screen and hopper, Both popcorn lines include flavouring drums, equipped with Acrison dry ingredient feeder and liquid feed system. The complete Tortilla production line (in storage) mostly exists of Casa Herrera equipment.
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18 Hayssen Ishida Packaging machines
The auction includes 18 Hayssen bagging units with Ishida 14 head weighing units in various different configurations. Also metal detectors, robotic case palletizing and conveying systems are among the auction lots.
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More information
Those interested in learning more about the auction can visit www.rabin.com for complete listings and photos or call +1.415.522.5700 .
