Tweet
What are some important considerations for the location of a pasta factory? Thank you,
-
-
One important consideration in the decision to locate a pasta factory is logistics. For a particular region, is it better to locate the factory closer to the raw materials or to the customers?
With a factory located closer to ingredients, like in the breadbasket region of the United States, a company can take advantage of lower transportation costs of the Semolina, as well as shorter delivery times for raw materials. Some pasta factories are collocated with mills, so Semolina is pneumatically piped from the mill to storage silos, thus lowering transportation costs as well as increasing responsiveness to raw material requirements (orders of raw materials can be filled quickly). Also, with the right pneumatic system, there is less handling, which decreases damage to raw materials.
With a factory located closer to customers, the company realizes efficiencies in transporting final product to the points of sale. Thus, the company can fill customer orders quickly (provided they have raw materials on-hand) and save in transportation costs of the final product. This becomes particularly important with producers of frozen entrees, where transportation of frozen goods becomes expensive, and time is of the essence for fresh products. For this reason, the Midwest of the United States has many frozen entrée plants. Another consideration is tariffs in the case of how certain countries tax importation of raw materials and final products.
In the early 1900s in the United States, many pasta factories were located in major cities. As time went on, and the sales of pasta increased, it became increasingly difficult to truck in large amounts of raw materials to meet the demand. The cities were growing and the road system became increasingly congested. Companies moved pasta factories to suburbs to take advantage of the rail system for movement of raw materials, but still remain close enough to their customers to truck pasta to the points of sale. Now, most pasta factories in the United States are located along a rail stop.
Comment