World Wide Gourmet Foods

Chocolate manufacturing can look deceptively simple from the outside. Melt chocolate, put it around or into something, cool it, and package it. In commercial production, however, creating a chocolate confection with the right appearance, snap, texture, flavor, and shelf stability requires careful control at every stage of the process.

The equipment used to temper, enrobe, mold, fill, and cool chocolate can also have a major impact on what products a manufacturer can produce—and on the minimum production quantities required to produce them economically.

At World Wide Gourmet Foods, Inc., we have deliberately taken a flexible approach to chocolate manufacturing. Rather than building our operation around one massive, dedicated high-speed line, we use multiple pieces of commercial Selmi chocolate equipment that can be configured for different products and production requirements. This gives us the ability to manufacture a wide variety of chocolate confections while maintaining more reasonable production minimums.

Understanding why that matters starts with understanding the major types of chocolate equipment.

Chocolate Tempering Equipment

Tempering is one of the most important steps in working with real chocolate. Cocoa butter can crystallize in several different forms, but properly tempered chocolate encourages the formation of the stable crystals needed to produce the characteristics consumers associate with high-quality chocolate: gloss, clean snap, good contraction from molds, and resistance to fat bloom.

There are several approaches to commercial tempering.

Batch Tempering Machines

Batch tempering machines heat, cool, and reheat a specific quantity of chocolate according to a programmed tempering cycle.

Advantages:

• Relatively simple operation
• Good control over individual batches
• Suitable for smaller production runs
• Easier product and chocolate changeovers
• Lower capital investment than large continuous systems

Disadvantages:

• Limited throughput
• Production may need to wait for each batch
• Less practical for high-volume continuous enrobing or molding
• Additional labor may be required as production volume increases

Batch tempering can be an excellent solution for artisan and smaller commercial manufacturers, but eventually becomes a bottleneck as production volume grows.

Continuous Tempering Machines

Continuous tempering machines continuously circulate chocolate through controlled heating and cooling zones. Properly tempered chocolate can then be supplied directly to an enrober, molding system, depositor, or other piece of equipment.

These machines provide an excellent balance between production capacity and flexibility.

Advantages:

• Continuous supply of tempered chocolate
• Consistent temperature control
• Can feed enrobing and molding equipment
• Good production efficiency
• Available in a wide range of capacities
• Well suited to medium-scale commercial manufacturing

Disadvantages:

• More expensive than basic batch systems
• Cleaning and changeovers require planning
• Production capacity is ultimately limited by the tempering machine’s throughput

World Wide Gourmet Foods uses multiple Selmi TopEx tempering machines, allowing us to support different chocolate processes and production lines while retaining considerable manufacturing flexibility.

Industrial Continuous Tempering Systems

At the largest scale are industrial tempering systems designed to supply extremely high-speed molding or enrobing lines.

These systems may handle hundreds or even thousands of pounds of chocolate per hour and are typically integrated into fully automated factories.

Advantages:

• Extremely high throughput
• Excellent consistency
• Very low labor requirements per finished unit
• Efficient for extremely large production runs

Disadvantages:

• Very high capital investment
• Significant cleaning and changeover requirements
• Large quantities of chocolate may remain within the system
• Less practical for frequent product changes
• Often requires very large production runs to operate economically

For manufacturers producing millions of identical pieces, these systems make tremendous sense. For brands requiring multiple SKUs or more manageable production runs, they can create unnecessarily high minimums.

Chocolate Enrobing Equipment

Enrobing is the process of coating a center with chocolate. The center might be a cookie, caramel, toffee, protein bar, truffle, nut-based center, crisp, or another confection.

There are several levels of enrobing technology.

Manual Enrobing

At the simplest level, products can be dipped or coated manually.

Advantages:

• Minimal equipment investment
• Extremely flexible
• Excellent for prototypes and very small batches

Disadvantages:

• Labor intensive
• Difficult to maintain consistent coating weights
• Slow
• Difficult to scale
• Greater variation between pieces

Manual dipping is useful for development work but generally isn’t practical for meaningful commercial production.

Small and Mid-Scale Continuous Enrobers

A continuous enrober moves centers along a belt beneath a curtain of tempered chocolate. Chocolate coats the top and sides of the product while a bottoming system can coat the underside.

Air blowers, vibrating sections, and detailers help remove excess chocolate and control coating thickness before the product enters cooling.

Advantages:

• Consistent chocolate coverage
• Considerably higher throughput than hand dipping
• Flexible enough for many different products
• Relatively quick product changeovers
• Suitable for moderate production runs
• Can accommodate many center shapes and sizes

Disadvantages:

• Slower than large industrial lines
• Product loading or unloading may require labor
• Line speed and belt width limit maximum output

This type of equipment offers an excellent compromise between commercial production efficiency and manufacturing flexibility.

Fully Automated Industrial Enrobing Lines

Large industrial enrobers can be extremely wide and operate continuously with automated feeding, cooling, inspection, and packaging systems.

Advantages:

• Extremely high throughput
• Low labor cost per unit
• Highly consistent products
• Excellent economics at very large volumes

Disadvantages:

• Very high equipment cost
• Large physical footprint
• Long cleaning and changeover times
• Less economical for smaller production runs
• Large minimum quantities may be necessary to justify setup

These systems are ideal for national products manufactured continuously, but they can be difficult to justify for emerging brands or products with numerous flavors and SKUs.

Chocolate Molding and Mold Filling Equipment

Molding opens another large category of chocolate confection manufacturing.

Chocolate molds can be used to manufacture solid chocolate pieces, filled chocolates, cups, bars, tablets, shells, layered products, and many other confections.

Manual Mold Filling

The simplest process involves manually filling molds with tempered chocolate.

Advantages:

• Very flexible
• Minimal equipment requirements
• Good for prototypes
• Easy to experiment with shapes and formulas

Disadvantages:

• Labor intensive
• Inconsistent weights
• Slow production
• Difficult to scale commercially

Semi-Automatic Mold Filling

Semi-automatic depositors or injection systems dispense controlled amounts of chocolate into molds.

The operator may position or advance the molds while the machine provides much greater control over the amount of chocolate being deposited.

Advantages:

• Greater weight consistency
• Faster than hand filling
• Relatively easy changeovers
• Good flexibility
• Suitable for multiple mold configurations
• More practical for moderate production runs

Disadvantages:

• Requires more labor than a fully automated line
• Lower throughput than industrial molding plants
• Molds still require handling

For contract manufacturing, however, that flexibility can be extremely valuable.

Polycarbonate Chocolate Molds

Commercial polycarbonate molds remain one of the most useful tools for producing premium molded chocolates.

Polycarbonate provides a hard, smooth surface that can produce excellent shine and detail when the chocolate is properly tempered and cooled.

Molds can also be designed for an enormous variety of products, including bars, cups, tablets, truffles, and filled chocolates.

Advantages:

• Excellent finished appearance
• Precise shapes
• Reusable molds
• Many product configurations possible
• Relatively inexpensive tooling compared with dedicated industrial machinery
• Excellent for premium chocolate products

Disadvantages:

• Molds require handling and cleaning
• Production capacity is limited by available molds and line speed
• Complex products may require multiple processing steps

Fully Automated One-Shot and Molding Lines

At the other end of the spectrum are industrial molding lines capable of automatically depositing chocolate and fillings into molds.

Some systems use one-shot technology to simultaneously deposit a chocolate shell and center.

Advantages:

• Very high production speed
• Excellent weight control
• Reduced labor
• Highly repeatable products
• Excellent for large established brands

Disadvantages:

• Very high capital cost
• Complex setup
• Product geometry and viscosity must fit the equipment
• More difficult product changeovers
• Significant cleaning requirements
• Large production quantities are typically necessary

The equipment may reduce the manufacturing cost per piece dramatically—but only when there are enough pieces to keep the equipment operating efficiently.

Chocolate Cooling Tunnels

Cooling is not simply about making chocolate cold. The cooling process helps stabilize the cocoa butter crystal structure established during tempering.

Cooling too quickly, too slowly, or under the wrong temperature and humidity conditions can contribute to poor gloss, inadequate mold release, condensation, bloom, or other quality problems.

Cooling Cabinets and Refrigerated Rooms

Small producers may place molds or trays into temperature-controlled cabinets or refrigerated rooms.

Advantages:

• Low equipment cost
• Flexible
• Useful for small production quantities

Disadvantages:

• Batch rather than continuous operation
• More product handling
• Less consistent cooling
• Difficult to integrate with an enrobing line

Compact Cooling Tunnels

Compact continuous tunnels allow products to move directly from an enrober or molding process through a controlled cooling environment.

Advantages:

• Continuous production
• More consistent cooling
• Can be integrated directly with enrobing equipment
• Smaller footprint than industrial tunnels
• Good balance of capacity and flexibility

Disadvantages:

• Limited belt width and throughput
• Cooling time must be balanced against belt speed
• Very large-volume products may require longer tunnels

Industrial Multi-Zone Cooling Tunnels

Large chocolate factories typically use long, multi-zone cooling tunnels.

Rather than exposing the chocolate to one temperature, these tunnels can progressively control product temperature as it moves through different cooling zones.

Advantages:

• Extremely consistent cooling
• High throughput
• Precise process control
• Excellent integration with high-speed molding and enrobing lines

Disadvantages:

• Large footprint
• High capital and operating cost
• Requires substantial production volume
• Less practical for frequent changeovers or small production runs

Again, the best technology depends heavily on the manufacturer’s production model.

The Tradeoff Between Automation and Flexibility

There is no universally “best” chocolate manufacturing line.

A fully automated line producing hundreds of thousands or millions of identical chocolate pieces can achieve extraordinarily low labor costs and very high throughput. The downside is that every product change creates downtime.

Changing chocolate, centers, molds, fillings, inclusions, or package formats may require substantial cleaning, setup, and production validation.

Those costs ultimately translate into minimum production quantities.

A line capable of producing enormous quantities every hour simply cannot economically stop after producing a few thousand pieces.

That creates an important distinction between a manufacturer optimized for maximum throughput and one optimized for manufacturing flexibility.

World Wide Gourmet Foods’ Flexible Approach to Chocolate Manufacturing

World Wide Gourmet Foods has deliberately built its chocolate manufacturing capabilities around flexibility.

Our chocolate operation includes:

• Multiple Selmi TopEx Tempering Machines
• Two Selmi R400T Enrobing Lines
• A Selmi Tunnel 400mm
• A second Cooling Tunnel
• A Selmi Moulding Line 275 with vibration
• Commercial polycarbonate chocolate molds
• A Selmi Injection Plate for mold filling

Rather than having one enormous production line dedicated to a narrow range of products, this equipment gives us multiple ways to manufacture chocolate confections.

We can temper chocolate for enrobing or molding, enrobe a wide variety of centers, work with different chocolate formulations, manufacture molded pieces, fill polycarbonate molds, and cool products under controlled conditions.

That makes it possible to manufacture products such as chocolate-covered cookies, enrobed bars and bites, caramels, toffees, truffles, peanut butter cups, molded chocolates, chocolate bars, bark, meltaways, and other custom confections.

Just as importantly, this approach helps us maintain reasonable production minimums.

Fully automated industrial chocolate lines can be extraordinarily efficient, but that efficiency is built around enormous production runs. A brand may find that the economics of a large automated manufacturer require producing hundreds of thousands—or even millions—of pieces at a time.

That isn’t necessarily the right solution for every brand.

Our approach gives World Wide Gourmet Foods the ability to combine commercial chocolate manufacturing equipment with the flexibility needed for emerging brands, specialty retailers, private-label programs, seasonal products, multiple-SKU programs, and established brands that simply don’t want to carry excessive inventories.

From Chocolate Recipe Development to Commercial Production

The manufacturing equipment is only one part of developing a successful chocolate confection.

Chocolate products also require an understanding of tempering, cocoa butter crystallization, chocolate viscosity, center formulation, water activity, fat migration, bloom, cooling, shelf life, packaging, and how a recipe behaves when it moves from a development kitchen onto commercial manufacturing equipment.

That transition is where commercialization becomes especially important.

A confection that works perfectly when someone makes 50 pieces by hand does not automatically behave the same way when thousands of pieces are moving through a tempering machine, enrober, molding line, and cooling tunnel.

World Wide Gourmet Foods is an expert in chocolate confection manufacturing, recipe development, and commercialization.

Our flexible equipment platform allows us to help customers move from concept and recipe development through commercialization and ultimately into repeatable commercial production—without automatically requiring the enormous minimum production runs associated with highly automated chocolate factories.

For brands looking to develop a new chocolate confection or commercialize an existing recipe, choosing the right manufacturing partner can be every bit as important as choosing the right chocolate.