Due to continuous rise of the cocoa beans price, chocolate manufacturers are getting more and more involved in developing alternatives to chocolate bars, or hybrid products like chocolate products that include biscuit, creams or any other kind of inclusions. This lead to the launch of a new type of product, consisting of a bar plated with biscuit pieces.

Challenges & Actions:

The challenges that have been overcome, were:

• almost no space for large storage equipment
• 3 lines with 3 dosing points each
• 2 to 3 different chocolate types
• high demand for reworking of imperfect product and chocolate recuperation
• no known practice for separation of chocolate and biscuit

They have been addressed by developing:

• rethinking of storage possibilities and building a storage tanks tower
• preparing the system for easy changeover by constructing main piping in such way that it can be cleaned by a rubber air propelled scraper
• testing different separation systems and finally developing an effective chocolate mass recuperation sieve

Deliverables:

• Outside storage tank tower with the capacity of holding 150 T of chocolate
• Flexible transfer system and elaborate dosing possibilities.
• Capability of recuperating 80% of the chocolate form non-shelf-worthy but safe product.

The greatest outcome of the project is the contribution to realizing a new innovative chocolate product. The second greatest outcome is the high degree of innovation included in the project:

• Redesigned storage tower
• Pipe cleaning by product pushing (new for Raptronic)
• New and effective separation method