Upgrading existing confectionery depositing systems
Date: 27 February 2004
Expanding product capability through retrofit options
Confectionery companies can now stimulate sales and profit through a range of new, innovative products - without heavy capital investment. Baker Perkins has adapted ideas and technology, developed for new confectionery depositing lines, to be available as retrofit options for existing systems.
Opportunities include upgrading from single to multi-colour capability, producing sugar-free or high milk and crème candies, and adding flavours.
Baker Perkins confectionery business director Mark Beaver explains, "The pace of introduction of new techniques has accelerated. Their availability as retrofits means that companies operating relatively new equipment can expand their product portfolio for a modest outlay."
The most recent addition to the retrofit portfolio from Baker Perkins has been two-colour and two-component capabilities for depositing systems. Two-colour depositing involves a 'one-shot' deposit from two hoppers containing different coloured candy syrups. This provides the capacity to create a diversity of vivid hard candies with striped, marbled or layered patterns
The same 'one-shot' technology may also be used for two-component depositing, allowing candies to be produced with a soft centre of jam, syrup, or a fat base such as chocolate. The creation of two distinct textures is a key marketing benefit.
Sugar free confectionery is growing rapidly in popularity around the world, to match the perceived benefits of a healthy diet and lifestyle. Baker Perkins has supplied several new plants adapted to the specific processing requirements, and vacuum skids have been developed for retrofitting to installed plant.
Sugar free candies can be produced with the same wide variety of colours and flavours as conventional confectionery. The added-value options of stripes, layers and liquid centres are all available.
For the hundreds of confectionery makers already producing candies on a 'Microfilm' cooking plant, a small investment in a pre-cooking injection system will add the increasingly popular option of high milk and cream hard candies to their product range. The process is effective on both sugar and sugar-free applications.
The final product flexibility option involves the ability to mix slurries into liquid hard candy to produce coffee and chocolate flavoured candies. This technique was developed jointly with a pharmaceutical company to introduce volatile flavours, such as menthol and eucalyptus, into hard candies.
New products invariably need new moulds, and Baker Perkins can meet the growing demand to bring products to market faster and more economically.
Using a combination of mould design on a 3D CAD system, and 3D rapid prototyping to make a single cavity test mould, trials on a new product within the Baker Perkins Innovation Centre can take place within two weeks of an initial idea.
A test batch of product can then be produced quickly for assessment by research, development and marketing teams. Once the design is approved, construction of the production moulds can also be fast-tracked, and the complete concept to production cycle reduced to a month, compared with the conventional three months.
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