They are passionate about pikelets at Quality Bakers in Dunedin.
In fact, they reckon jam consumption in the staff room at the Kaikorai Valley Rd factory has rocketed since the pikelet line was installed several months ago.
The February 2011 earthquake in Canterbury damaged the Quality Bakers Christchurch site beyond repair.
Since then, both the Dunedin and Nelson sites have increased production of baked products to meet South Island demand.
The pikelet line was relocated from Christchurch at the beginning of September in a seamless transition. Within a week, it was packed up, shifted to Dunedin, installed and had started production, site manager Marcus James said.
A room had to be reconditioned and there had been some infrastructure work to do but it had gone ''without a hitch'', he said.
The line was producing 750 packets of pikelets an hour and runs were three to five hours a day. It created three additional jobs at the site.
The factory is one of Goodman Fielder New Zealand's 15 manufacturing sites throughout New Zealand employing about 2000 employees.
In Dunedin, 65 fulltime staff were employed, as well as contractors to cope with demand. Engineering support was managed in-house by five fulltime engineers.
The increase in volume following the closure of the Christchurch site meant the addition of another shift in the bread plant, which now operated between 18 and 22 hours a day, seven days a week.
More than 15 million units were made annually, with brands produced in Dunedin including Vogels, MacKenzie High Country Bread, Freya's, Molenberg, Nature's Fresh and Country Split.
The smallgoods plant, which produces buns and rolls, was now operating up to 15 hours a day, seven days a week, with nearly five million units made annually.
Dunedin was the single most complicated manufacturing site for Goodman Fielder, Mr James said.
Quality Bakers Dunedin has been on the Kaikorai Valley site since the 1960s when it was originally Holsum Bakeries. It was acquired by Quality Bakers in 1984.
Some staff had worked at the site for more than 30 years, with an average length of more than eight years.
While it was an old plant, it was running ''extraordinarily well'' and was very efficient, Mr James said.
He was full of praise for the staff, saying people involved in the baking industry were very adaptive and flexible.
''I'm pretty proud of this site. They're a good bunch of people doing an outstanding job,'' he said.
Baking was different from other industries in that those involved were not building inventory to manage over the course of weeks or months.
''It happens today, or it doesn't happen,'' he said.
