Heat and Control Brand Guidelines: Five San Francisco Engineers, Furnaces, Then Fryers

Five engineers and a problem of process heat.

Heat and Control began in San Francisco in 1950, not in the Hayward address it is known by today. The company says five engineers founded it to improve process heating applications, such as heat treatment furnaces and combustion systems, and it marks its anniversary on 27 June. It names one of them, Andy Caridis, as “one of the original founders,” and trade papers including Food Processing called him simply the founder in 2021.

Food came soon afterwards. The company’s timeline says the business expanded in the 1950s and 1960s into consumer goods machinery, including snack food fryers, oil blanchers for french fries, and cooking and coating systems for meat and poultry. A company release for its 70th anniversary in 2020 says it “quickly became food focused” as the industry grew in the 1960s. By the 1970s, by its own account, it was designing and building complete processing systems for snacks and prepared foods rather than single machines.

Food Processing reported in 2021 that he was credited with, or had supervised, more than 130 patents over 70 years, including work on french fries, snack foods and prepared foods. The attribution came from his son, Tony Caridis, the company’s president.

The company writes its name in words, with “and” rather than an ampersand, and with a registered mark in its formal releases.

A partner in Japan, factories abroad.

The 1980s set the shape of the modern business. The company’s timeline dates its partnership with Ishida to 1980, when the two introduced the Japanese maker’s computer combination weigher to North America. Weighing became part of what Heat and Control could offer alongside its own processing equipment, and its 70th-anniversary release mentions the Ishida partnership among the events of that decade.

Expansion abroad followed quickly. In 1984 the company acquired a manufacturing site at Livingston, Scotland, to serve Britain and Europe. In 1985 it opened a factory at Guadalajara, Mexico, and bought Greer Pty Ltd of Brisbane, Australia. In 1987 it moved into controls and information technology, with a technology hub at Stanwood, Washington.

The product range filled out through the 1990s. The company introduced its FastBack horizontal motion conveyors and related transfer conveyors and fillers. In 1990 it bought a snack fryer maker at Pembroke, New Hampshire, which brought the Mastermatic name into the catalogue. It added a factory at Galesburg, Illinois, in 1992, the same year it opened offices in Cape Town, and in 1997 it moved its headquarters to a larger manufacturing site at Hayward, across the bay from San Francisco.

The next two decades ran through Asia and South America. A factory opened at Nanjing, China, in 2004, followed by offices in Chennai, India, in 2006, and a sales office in the Netherlands in 2007. In 2005 it agreed to sell and service CEIA industrial metal detectors through its network. In 2011 it bought Flavorite Technologies of Indore, India, to serve the Indian savoury snack trade, and Spray Dynamics of Missouri, for coating and seasoning systems. A factory followed at São Paulo in 2012 and another at Mahindra City, India, in 2017.

In 2017 it also formed a partnership with ScandiNova Systems of Sweden on pulsed electric field technology, sold as the E-FLO electroporation system. The range now reaches well past the fryer. Its website sorts solutions by what customers make, from corn chips and french fries to coffee and pet food.

Design and documentation.

Makers of food processing machinery tend to show the work itself. Stainless lines are photographed under cool light, fillets move along white belts, sausage ropes curve out of a filler, slicers fan portions onto a conveyor, and fryers and seasoning drums turn snacks in close-up. The BBC opened a 2017 report on Marel in just that way, with cod on a conveyor and a machine cutting each fillet into portions.

Steel carries much of the imagery. Wash-down surfaces, welded seams and the curve of a hopper recur in close-up, and the machines are shown at close range.

Test kitchens and technology centres are the sector’s showrooms. JBT Marel lists Customer Technology Centers on several continents where customers can run their own product through the equipment, and Handtmann describes its Forum in Biberach as a technology and customer centre. Websites often follow the customer’s food rather than the machine: JBT Marel sorts its site by poultry, meat, seafood, prepared foods and beverages, and Handtmann’s regional sites by meat and sausage, baked goods, pet food and dairy.

The trade fairs set the calendar. IFFA in Frankfurt, SÜDPACK in Friedrichshafen, Anuga FoodTec in Cologne, Seafood Processing Global in Barcelona and PACK EXPO in the United States are regular venues for the sector, alongside bakery and ingredient shows: vegconomist reported that Handtmann took new bakery processes to iba in 2025, and JBT Marel’s news page reported on CibusTec in 2026. This guide sets out what can be checked about each maker: who founded it, who owns it, and where its machines are made, marking clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

A private company, run by a family.

Food Processing described it in June 2021 as privately owned, and the company’s 75th-anniversary release of July 2025 called it a “family company,” with Tony Caridis, Andy Caridis’s son, as president. The same release says father and son were inducted together into the 2025 Circle of Honor of SNAC International, the snack industry association.

It has gone on buying. In April 2025 it announced the purchase of two British companies, Tek-Dry Systems, which makes drying, toasting, cooling and roasting equipment, and Hunt Heat Exchangers, a maker of custom heat exchange systems; Packaging News in Australia reported the deal. In June 2025 it added Fabcon Food Systems, a British maker of processing and handling systems established in 2013.

Where its machines are made is a global answer. Food Processing counted 11 manufacturing facilities, 12 test centres and more than 30 offices in 2021. The company’s timeline describes full-capability factories at Nanjing and Mahindra City and a factory at São Paulo, along with American sites at Galesburg and St. Louis, the latter opened in 2018. A site at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, opened in 2021 for testing, demonstrations, service and training. A facility in Mexico followed in 2022, which the company calls its largest property so far and the head office for Latin America. A new building in Cape Town opened in May 2023. Staff numbers have risen too: the company’s president gave almost 1,700 people in 2021, and the company said more than 2,500 in 2025.

The company’s language today is about making things. Its website greets customers with the question “What do you want to create today?”, and it describes its people as “process and product technologists” working on food, pharmaceutical and other industries “with science and imagination.” It also runs a blog under the name Innovator. The history section of its website is headed “Leading the way since 1950.”

For a design guide, Heat and Control shows how a plain descriptive name can outlast the trade it first described. Compare Ishida, its weighing partner since 1980, and Urschel, another American maker of food machinery. For this guide we use a navy and an ember orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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