Beacon Foods

Based in the heart of Mid Wales, Beacon Foods is a Family owned business started by Mother and Son partnership, Rae Jones and Edward Gough back in 1993 to supply fresh chilled food ingredients to manufacturing businesses, from very humble beginnings the company has grown into a well-respected, award winning business that boasts a huge range of food ingredients from base purees such as garlic, ginger & chillies to, sauces marinades and char grilled, roasted Fruit and vegetables, they supply into many different types of businesses from food manufactures, high street casual dining chains and the travel industry in the UK and across Europe, they employee around 160 people and operate from a modern production facility with state of the art production equipment.

The Issue?

Due to expansion into a third building at their site in Brecon, Beacon Foods required a modern telephone system capable of meeting their ever-changing needs with the capacity and flexibility to continue growing and add on additional users when needed. The food manufacturer also had traditional ISDN2 digital phonelines in place which, aside from being quite a costly solution, were limiting the company’s call handling options. Beacon Foods also required a solution to link all three buildings together which would enable the staff at each site to communicate freely with their IT and telecoms infrastructure.

The Response

Having already supplied the company’s mobiles for a number of years we already had a really good relationship with the client. A site survey was arranged with our engineering team which enabled us to have an in-depth look at the current set-up and get to understand the restrictions the company were having with their current system and discuss their requirements moving forward. With the company operating from a 36,000 square foot factory it was crucial to ensure that all members of staff could be communicated with easily and also give them the freedom to make and receive calls whilst wandering around the site. The survey was also vital in helping diagnose the best solution for linking the existing buildings with their new storage facility.

The Solution

Redline arranged for the installation of a single mode fibre optic cable between the existing buildings and the new storage facility allowing Beacon Foods to easily transmit data between the sites. This enabled us to install a new Ericsson LG UCP on-premise telephone system into the main factory and then link this up with the other two buildings to ensure all three sites were operational on the same telephone system. This also meant that all the equipment could be located and easily accessed in one central comms room to control all three sites.

The Ericsson LG UCP system was the perfect solution as it allowed Beacon Foods to get rid of their ISDN2 digital phonelines and make the move to SIP Trunks, enabling them to route all calls via their broadband connection with no call charges. The system also allows capacity up to 500 users giving the company flexibility and the freedom to continue to grow in the future. The extensive Ericsson LG handset range also meant we could supply a range of desk handsets for the company’s desk-based workers and then cordless system DECT handsets for those members of staff who needed the ability to communicate whilst moving around the factory. IP rated robust IP phones were also provided for the factory floor.

As part of the project we also integrated and expanded the existing Valcom Tannoy system to enable Beacon Foods to easily send out messages to all of their staff across all three sites using the new telephone system. Finally, a dedicated conference phone was also installed into the company’s main boardroom with HD voice and an LCD touch screen.

Ericsson LG UCP on-premise Telephone System

Ericsson LG desk & system DECT cordless handsets

Conference phone

IP rated robust IP phones for the factory floor

SIP Trunks with inclusive calls (make & receive calls over the internet)

40Gbps Fibre link between buildings

Tannoy system

What our client had to say…

With the company continuing to expand this was a very important project for us to ensure we chose the right provider and solution to not only meet our current needs but to also give us the capacity to grow further in the future. We’re extremely pleased with the solution Redline have implemented and we now have the perfect infrastructure and ongoing support in place to serve us across all three sites.

Thomas Powell – IT & Systems Co-ordinator