“Do not disturb!” – tersely worded, admittedly, but it puts in a nutshell the demands placed on slicing machines, especially when used in branches: they must be coordinated with the shop-fittings or in a trendy black housing, occupy little space, do their job reliably, hygienically, safely and quickly, and require little maintenance.

Jac showed the SLIM version of its black-fronted circular knife cutting machine. Loaves to be sliced are fed into this machine standing on end. Slicing vertically instead of horizontally has one decisive advantage: the construction is narrow, as the name suggests, so it occupies little floor space, and 60 x 60 cm2 is enough to handle loaves 42 cm long, 25 cm wide and 16 or 20 cm high. The user selects a slice thickness between 5 and 25 mm via a touchscreen. Crumbs drop into a crumb drawer accessible from the front. Also shown was the new Swift type of cutting machine whose simplified feed system can speed up slicing. The machine cuts brown bread, toast-bread and even warm bread at the rate of up to 360 baked items/hour.