Mrs Higgins Oven Fresh Cookies is a New Zealand company that bakes American style cookies. The company believes the ingredients and the production processes they use set their cookies apart from other cookies on the market. Using the best equipment to keep their ingredients and baking processes consistent is of paramount importance to them.

Mrs Higgins Cookies had previously investigated alternative options for keeping their cookie dough at a consistent temperature. They use real New Zealand butter and no preservatives. The cookie dough temperature needed to be constantly maintained between 18-22°C. This is particularly important when the dough contains ingredients such as butter that would either be too hard in winter or too soft in summer.

The cookie factory used separate equipment to control cookie dough temperature. A hot water cylinder heated the water and a chiller cooled the water while a thermostat measured the temperature. This arrangement was manually monitored and adjusted. The water was then fed into a jacket that surrounded the mixing bowl to keep dough at a constant temperature.

New custom designed premises were underway for the company, so it was the perfect time to review their equipment. Markus Hasler, from Mrs Higgins Cookies, contacted HWHP (Hot Water Heat Pumps Ltd) to consider a previous solution they had offered. The HWHP solution comprised a Performance Plus heat and chill heat pump water heater and a buffer tank combination that worked together to control the temperature of the water being circulated in the jacket of the mixing bowl.

A control box with a temperature display for monitoring automatically coordinates the system to regulate the temperature. The control box activates a circulation pump, and the heat and chill unit detects the water temperature in the buffer tank, then automatically heats or chills water to maintain the desired set temperature of 20°C. The circulation pump distributes water to the jacket then returns it to the buffer tank.

Markus was very happy with the new option “The HWHP solution was more accurate, significantly easier to use and more reliable than the previous system,” he said. Markus liked the simplicity of the system HWHP presented and found it also allowed more flexibility for unknown variables than the previous system offered. He requested that HWHP handle installation of the equipment so that there was only one point of contact for any future maintenance.

The HWHP system was the best solution for Mrs Higgins Cookies, it was more effective at a lower cost than the previous arrangement and Markus found HWHP easy to deal with.