Smo-King Ovens' smokehouses and smoke ovens have been built in Australia for twenty-two years. Originally based on copies of outdated European designs, they still allowed retail butchers to commence producing their own smallgoods and provided the means to compete with supermarkets
which sell mass produced products supplied by large processors. They are now rated highly against the best designs available from Europe and the USA. Product improvement The Smo-King Ovens' smokehouse designs improved markedly during the period from 1986 when the bus- iness was owned by Lawrence Hall & Sons who have a tradition of engineering excellence in the meat process-
ing machinery industry. Particular attention was given to overcoming earlier problems of product yield, smoke generator safety, heating efficiency and airflow.

The Sydney based Hodgkinson family purchased the business in 1997 and commenced investing in product development. The increasingly popular model 2350 single trolley smokehouse was the first new model to have been released. It soon became obvious the Australian market for smokehouses was far too small to enable a specialist smokehouse manufacturing business to be viable. Innovative product development is expensive and could not be supported by the smoke house business alone. It was essential to add other food processing equipment.

The range was expanded by products imported from the USA and Europe. These products complement the Smo-King Ovens' smokehouse range and all are technology leaders in their individual fields. The Cookshack smokers, cook and hold ovens and dryers were the first additions followed by Pökomat brine injectors, Double D Food Engineering REVORACK multi-purpose cookers and REVOBAND travelling ovens and bar markers, RÄUCHERGOLD wood smoking chips, Suhner vacuum tumblers and most recently GROTE food slicers.

These imported ranges have made a significant contribution to the Smo-King Ovens business and helped finance the development of four new smokehouse products launched during August 2004. The new GRAND SERIES is now being used by a major New Zealand exporter of smoked fish.

Development is based on extensive customer feedback

Smokehouse development is a continuous process using the feedback from more than a thousand

users of Smo-King Oven's smokehouses in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Europe and the extensive experience of our own technical staff. Purpose designed and built microprocessor controllers are used on all models. Our newest controllers provide simple operation, certainty of process control, data recording to satisfy the most demanding food safety regulations and vastly greater reliability than electro-mechanical controllers used in earlier models. Smo-King Ovens Pty Limited elects to have smokehouse bodies and microprocessor controllers built to our specifications by local contractors.

Marketing focuses on customer profit improvement

We focus on providing food processors with the means of growing sales and profits by value added processing of meat, poultry, fish and vegetables. Our range is used for this purpose in Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Specialist independent distributors add value for our customers

Most of our smokehouses are sold by specialist distributors who have extensive experience in smokehouse operation and also supply the consumables used for processing, packaging and retail display. Our network of Australian and New Zealand family-owned independent distributors have specialist personnel with years of experience to commission new smokehouses, provide operator training and continued assistance to users who wish to develop new smoked and cooked foods. Other distributors provide similar support in Asia, Europe and Mexico.

Lifetime customer support

While we at Smo-King Ovens do not consider ourselves to be food processing experts, we have learned a lot from years of contact with the many users of our smokehouses. We are always prepared to provide processing assistance and operating support to smokehouse users subject, of course, to maintaining confidentiality of detailed processes developed by other users.We regularly provide telephone assistance to people who have purchased used Smo-King Ovens' smokehouses. Telephone assistance is provided free of charge.

Our equipment has a reputation for reliability but, in time, some components will suffer wear and tear. We carry an extensive range of spare parts. Orders placed by 3:00pm eastern Australian time are routinely despatched the same day and are delivered the next day to most parts of Australia. Parts supplied to other countries can be normally available within a few days.

We encourage processors considering selecting our equipment to speak to some of the many hundreds of existing users. We are confident of a good report. Having said that, we most of all are conscious of our own shortcomings and continually strive to eliminate identified weaknesses.

Our commitment remains to continued improvement, customer support and providing the means for food processors to grow their own profitability by using our equipment.