Revent’s engineering has always been a mixture of intuition and skill; innovations evolved out of a unique sense of what would work. An all this was based on the pioneering attitude of understanding bakers’ needs as the first rack oven hit the floor in 1958.
Early on, we understood the importance of mastering heat and air flow. It was in the beginning of the 1960’s that Revent came up with the idea of installing a fan that reversed hot air every two minutes, avoiding the need to open the doors to manually rotate the rack. Fundamental knowledge of air technology fathered such innovations as the upward flowing air streams, still pivotal to the Revent designs of today. The company name Revent is based on air technology, Re-ventilation – Re-vent.
In the late 1950’s, as labour costs in the country rose, the industry was challenged to come up with new cost-saving solutions.
Back then, a piece of dough or the finished baked products were loaded and unloaded manually back and forth to trays. To transport these trays between the proofing chambers and the deck ovens, different types of transportation trolleys, sometimes made out of wood, were used. The process was time consuming and labour intensive.
So what if it was possible to minimize handling and make the process more efficient and at the same time make life a little bit easier for the baker?
It was with this question in mind that the founders of Revent started to look for a solution: a solution that would lead to the birth of the world’s first rack oven, an oven that would revolutionize the baking industry.
Suddenly there was no longer the need for handling the products back and forth from the trays. All you needed to do was to load the pieces of dough on trays which were then loaded into a rack where they would remain throughout the whole process, regardless of whether they were rolled into the proofing units, rolled into the oven, or just parked in the corner in the bakery where the bread could cool.
By 1964, the design was so good it attracted international attention. Herbie Freedman and Adam Boren, two New Jersey businessmen and baking entrepreneurs, traveled around in search of new machinery. In northern Sweden at a large scale bakery, a couple of shiny, steel structures caugt their attention. A short time later they found themselves in Stockholm to negotiate a historic contract to sell Revent equipment in the US.
A year later, lead designer Leif Johansson and production manager Magnus Tillander, flew to New Jersey and installed the first rack oven on American soil. It was Revent oven no. 106.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.