H&C News meets with suppliers regularly to keep up to date with the latest product and service innovations, aiming to get the inside track on what companies offer to the market and how it is delivered.
This week, we met with Simon Aspin, commercial director of Hubbard Systems, the ice machine specialist, at the company’s head office in Great Blakenham near Ipswich.
Hubbard Systems markets the Scotsman range of ice machines. Our business is all about our ice expertise, our customer support and Scotsman’s market-leading range. In our 2013 customer satisfaction survey, the Scotsman machine build quality and reliability was highlighted, while Hubbard Systems scored over 90% in all areas of customer support.
We’re always looking at ways to help customers. For example, because modern ice makers produce a whole variety of different ice cubes, flakes, nuggets and so forth, all designed for different purposes, we published What’s Your Ice Type?This guide advises which ice is best for, say, drinks on the rocks or blenders or fast food. It’s available to download free from www.scotsman-ice.co.uk
We want to talk to customers – that’s why you’ll find our phone number (along with our email address) on every page of our website. If you want advice, service or a new ice maker, just call us. And when you call, you’ll get answered by a human, not a machine.
New technologies are bringing big changes in the ice machine market. Energy and water saving are key parts of that, but there’s also the issue of hygiene and ease of use. Scotsman has a huge range of models – there are over 400 variants. In order to maintain our market-leading position, we have to be ahead of the field.
Take our new Prodigy range. It’s the smartest yet when it comes to sustainability. It features a patented WaterSense control which reduces scale build-up and keeps the machine cleaner for longer. The optional Vari-Smart ice level control uses ultrasonic technology to maintain the selected ice level. It allows the operator to determine and programme how much ice they need for up to seven days in advance. That means the customers get the ice they want when they want it, while operators save water and electricity.
Scotsman has invested in ways to make it easier for the end user to maintain their machines, rather than having to call out the service engineer for every task. So tasks such as condenser cleaning can be done simply, in a couple of minutes, by staff.
A great benefit of this approach is that, while the machine will still need to be regularly serviced, the service charges will be reduced if these simpler tasks are done in-house. This ‘designed-in simplicity’, can reduce maintenance costs and the size of the equipment’s carbon footprint.
We are constantly looking to develop new products to meet customer needs. For example, we launched the TC180 ice dispenser to make it simple to dispense cubelet ice. As the demand for cold drinks increased, customers needed more ice, so we developed a version of the TC180 with extra storage. And as the demand kept increasing, we’ve now launched the Ice Tower, which gives a constant supply of ice.
For the future, we’re looking at launching a whole new range of more energy efficient machines. We’re very excited about a new icemaker that produces a new type of ice – Superdice – that’s great for drinks but also kind to blender blades.
For more information on the full range of Scotsman ice machines, and details of local stockists, call Hubbard Systems on 01473 350045 email sales@hubbardsystems.co.uk or visit www.scotsman-ice.co.uk