In a move made public shortly before Christmas, Aga Foodservice, Inc. has reorganized into three North American entities and named Mark Whalen president of the newly formed Aga Foodservice Equipment (AFE) division, which includes Victory Refrigeration, Infinity Fryers, Stellar Steam and Northland Refrigeration.

These changes, announced on December 21st by Iain J. Whyte, who remains in charge of overall Aga Foodservice operations in the U.S. and Canada, have also resulted in the establishment of Aga Bakery North America. This division is being led by Roger Faw, president of Belshaw Brothers, and will concentrate its sales efforts on retail and wholesale bakeries, as well as supermarkets. Adamatic and other international Aga Bakery companies will join Belshaw in the new bakery group. The third new division, Aga Appliance Manufacturing, which will be under Whyte's direct administration, will be dedicated to the sales and marketing of high-end residential cooking and refrigeration products to the consumer market.

Whalen, who had previously served for 18 months as Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the foodservice equipment brands, added a note of explanation about the company's recent realignment. "While Roger will lead Aga Bakery's efforts in all aspects of bakery sales, Aga Bakery's foodservice programs will be developed within the foodservice equipment division. This is because we want to be sure that all of our companies are positioned as closely as possible to the markets that they serve," he explained.

Among the key objectives AFE will work to attain in 2006, according to Whalen, will be to increase market share and profitability. "To do this, we will need to continue consistently marketing our V2E message, re-emphasizing the greater energy efficiencies and lower life-cycle costs offered by AFE commercial kitchen equipment," he stressed. "We also intend to be more aggressive with our dealer Spot Buy and buying group programs in '06, and to give specifying consultants increased reasons to put equipment from Victory, Infinity and Stellar, as well as our Bakery product lines, on their projects' equipment lists."

Whalen added that recent tests of Infinity's high-output, energy-saving fryers in QSR and school foodservice kitchens had produced "very promising" results for operators' programs. Therefore, plans are now underway to launch the newly specified Infinity fryer line with AFE dealers and reps during the first half of 2006.

Specific plans for Stellar Steam's innovative, low life-cycle cost products include expanding foodservice and retail sales across the U.S. through the traditional dealer channel. "We see a strong opportunity to introduce Stellar's boilerless steamer models into the supermarket sector, in support of increasingly popular retail HMR programs," Whalen commented. "Thanks to Stellar steamers' leading-edge technology, they perform as well as conventional units at 10% of the life-cycle cost and require far less maintenance and downtime."

To ensure that all products manufactured and marketed by AFE can be sold on the value they add for end-users and equipment specifiers, Whalen further noted that his new division will work this year to improve equipment manufacturing processes to attain even greater performance efficiencies and to develop greater component compatibility across product lines.

"The challenges posed by today's over-supplied, high-manufacturing cost market are formidable, but I believe that the AFE division has the management, manufacturing and sales resources to better our competitive position and bottom line," he affirmed. "I look forward to leading our group of reputable brands to continue to produce high-value equipment that sets the market standard for durability, reliability and energy efficiency."

For more information, visit Aga Foodservice's web site at www.agafoodservice.com