Pie making for us as a family all began in the early 1980’s. We were the first independent pie manufacturing family in the Eastern Cape, South Africa and probably one of the originals in the country.
Thanks to fantastic Southern Italian recipes which remain a closely guarded secret and legendary pastry, our family business grew rapidly.
At times, we were producing more than 5000 pies per day.
It was the limitation of space and high costs that spurred the concept that is now the Pie Designs & Solutions system. We needed to develop ways of working smarter, using less space, producing more pies, more profitably.
Having an aircraft engineer as a father and Italian mom that’s a genius cook, teacher and manager, solutions were innovated.
Over the years, those tried and tested solutions were engineered into our range of hard-working industrial, modular pie machines.

Pie-making and bakery equipment development

The innovative 90’s…

Proven bakery equipment engineering

The ground breaking 2000’s…

In 2003, we were privileged to supply our new lidding/crimping machine to the King Pie South Africa group. In the midst of trials due to recession and collapse of the manufacturing industry; This was pivotal to our survival, and a positive turning point.

During the next year, work began on designing the world’s first cold blocking/forming process, and we launched the original machine in early 2006. The initial two unheated blocking systems were sold to the manufacturers of Christmas mince pies for Woolworths, an upmarket retailer and supplier of quality foods and merchandise in South Africa.
It was the success of this sale that enabled us to move forward. It also made us realise the true potential of our process: the manufacturers for Woolworths had to produce 9 million Christmas mince pies to be in store by December.
Two Cold Blocking Systems and two Lidding Machines were supplied in late September for production to begin for this December order. The order was successfully completed producing nine million pies on two machines in as little as three months.

Constant improvements in pie-making equipment

Our Cold Blocking Machine has since evolved. We have supplied major retailers and franchises with our machinery. In addition, our machinery has ensured that the smaller independent pie manufacturers can remain competitive in the market, and are now in the powerful position to contend with the giants of the industry.
We believe in both innovation and constant improvement and development is an ongoing process.