Founded in 1642, New Hall is the largest Catholic boarding and day school in England, teaching boys and girls aged 3-18.
The school offers co-education in the preparatory school (ages 3-11), single-sex education for boys and girls from 11-16 and co-education in the sixth form.
Providing the best of both worlds, the school says the provision of single-sex education during formative years enables students to grow in confidence, whilst enjoying an education that is specifically tailored and that recognises the different ways in which boys and girls learn.
Mealtimes
Catering facilities including the main kitchen and central dining hall, which are managed by Catering Manager Simon Connolly, Harrisons Catering Services. Some 28 staff in total work in the catering department, including seven chefs. With up to 1,200 pupils plus staff to feed, the kitchen handles up to 10,000 meals per week, with 1,500 served lunchtimes, over three sittings.
With the school expanding over recent years, almost doubling in numbers, the dishwash area – most particularly the handling area for soiled ware – came under tremendous pressure.
The main issue was the 20 year old carousel, where students deposited their trays after meals; it simply could not handle the extra numbers and queues formed as students lined up at the front end of the carousel to deposit their trays. The staff in the dishwash itself were equally having trouble coping with the deluge of trays.
It was time to look for a simpler and faster tray set down and disposal method.
“We knew Meiko well, especially their engineers,” says Connolly, “because we have a planned maintenance contract which includes a major service twice yearly.
“Meiko’s Regional Sales Manager Mark Sharland and I looked at systems installed at other sites and I liked what I saw.”
The proposal to uprate the dishwash area included the addition of an extra wash tank to the existing Meiko K200 KVAP rack transport machine to increase the hourly basket throughput to enable the additional numbers to be handled with ease.
But the key change was to the carousel and handling system. During the site visits, Connolly had seen Meiko’s RF cord conveyor systems in use: “Very simple, easy to maintain and efficient.”
Meiko designed a new system to replace the carousel, incorporating a cord conveyor system feeding into the dishwash and a new forward sorting station to decant the trays, including waste scrapping section and Disperator waste disposal unit.
“It was important to have the whole system from one supplier so that the whole thing would work seamlessly. Operationally it is much more workable and is much more aesthetically pleasing and ergonomic,” says Connolly.
“The dishwash staff prefer the new method of working as it removes the double handling which we had previously, when they were taking trays off the carousel and then having to turn round and put them down to process. Now, they can work straight from the tray to fill the racks, which are then simply pushed onto the roller table taking them into the dishwasher.
“Meiko is a professional organisation with a quality product.”
Meiko UK Limited, 393 Edinburgh Avenue, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 4UF
Email: MeikoUK@meiko-uk.co.uk
Tel. +44 1753 215120
Website: www.meiko-uk.co.uk
H&C News recently met with Meiko’s Nick Falco to get a better understanding of the business and the full interview can be seen here