Svenska BakePartner, headquartered in Boras, Sweden, has built its products and its reputation on reliability. Christer Andersson created the family-owned business in 1992 with the objective of developing stone hearth pizza ovens that operated with consistency and stability at extremely high temperatures.
Today the company sells PizzaMaster pizza ovens and BakePartner bakery ovens in more than 150 countries, and it offers the world’s largest series of electric deck ovens, available in more than 1,000 combinations. PizzaMaster ovens are found in restaurants across the globe and in kitchens from monasteries to yachts and Italian pizza schools.
An important ingredient in the success of Svenska BakePartner has been its ability to meet and resolve challenges in the design of pizza ovens, employing components from ABB that have promoted consistency and reliability.
“A good oven should maintain a uniform and stable temperature throughout the oven,” Andersson says. “You should be able to bake many pizzas in succession without the temperature swaying. And above all, of course, they should not break.”
Achieving such uniformity is complicated by the fact that pizza differs considerably across countries and regions. Swedish pizza, for example, is baked at about 300 C, while Neapolitan pizza requires temperatures of 500. Reliability for a pizza oven becomes more difficult as its operating temperature increases.
ABB’s expertise helps shape oven design
Since PizzaMaster ovens are built for all types of pizza, Svenska BakePartner faced a range of issues when it expanded from its home base in Scandinavia to other countries. The ovens needed to cope with highly varying climates and air pressures, unstable electricity grids and a wide range of user behaviors. It was important that customers trust PizzaMaster ovens and their reliability, as well as installation and service.
“We went through every little detail in the ovens, examining everything,” Andersson recalls. “At that point we started to collaborate with ABB. To design ovens properly, we needed to understand in detail how components work at different temperatures and air pressures. Unlike other suppliers, ABB was able to tell us everything we needed to know about the electrical components for our ovens, including how their functioning varies with the temperature. This thorough understanding allowed us to dimension the components just right so that they never break.”
Today, Svenska BakePartner incorporates a range of ABB products in PizzaMaster ovens, including AF contactors that play an important role in heat control, miniature circuit breakers that serve as fuses in the oven’s built-in safety system, and halogen-free cable channels that keep cables organized.
A pizza partnership cooks up technical solutions
Svenska BakePartner has appreciated the fact that, whenever they faced a problem, ABB experts always were available to help find the best technical solution, together with the customer. Working as a team has been a recipe for success.
“If ABB can help Svenska BakePartner become strong, this partnership also strengthens us,” explains ABB Domestic Sales Representative Annnika Schiller.
The reliability of ABB components has helped provide Svenska BakePartner with the confidence to take on even larger goals as it now seeks to become the largest manufacturer of pizza ovens in the world.
“I see all other ovens, including gas and wood stoves, as our competitors,” Andersson notes. “Wood ovens certainly have an aesthetic advantage, but in terms of baking, our ovens are the best in the world.” And ABB is working to help BakePartner cut into an ever-larger slice of the market.
