FOOD PROCESSING SOLUTIONS
Steel belts for chocolate manufacturing solutions IPCO offers a range of processing solutions for confectionery manufacturers. Food & Beverage Industry News looks at its latest range.
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ooling and forming are critical stages in the production of both chocolate and confectionery, and few companies have more experience in these areas than Melbourne-based IPCO. As an independent company owned by FAM AB, and part of the Swedish-based Wallenberg group, IPCO is a globally active engineering company with sales and service offices in more than 35 countries. As a business its connection with the food industry stretches back almost
a century, when its steel belts were first used in bake ovens. Milestones since then include their use for cooling chocolate drops at an American confectionery company in the 1930s, for ice-cream freezing (1959) and for chocolate conveying (1960). Today, IPCO steel belts are used in applications ranging from simple conveying to continuous processes such as cooling/solidification, conditioning, casting, freezing and finishing. In parallel with this, IPCO has developed its own forming systems including the Rotoform FD – a foodgrade pastillation system used to turn molten product, such as chocolate,
The Rotoform FD can be used with a whole range of different confectioneries. 36 Food&Beverage Industry News | October 2019 | www.foodmag.com.au
fruit-flavoured jelly, gum base, fats and other additives, into solid, consistently sized pastilles.
Processing solution for industrial and decorative chocolate This expertise in pastillation in general, and chocolate in particular, has seen the company create a specialist division focussed on chocolate processing. With its own production facilities in Breda, The Netherlands, this division produces versatile forming systems for both industrial (chunks, chips and blocks) and decorative (rolls, shavings, blossoms etc.) chocolate products. These systems are designed to maximise productivity while also ensuring a premium quality end product. The company has developed a
portfolio that includes depositors, extruders, cutters and decorative forming systems, as well as highperformance, steel-belt conveyors and economical plastic belt systems. By combining these different elements, IPCO can offer process lines suitable for everything from low-cost, rapid-deployment start-ups to high-performance, multi-layer systems.
Rotoform rotary depositing chip production At the heart of every IPCO highspeed, high-capacity chocolate forming system is the Rotoform rotary depositor, a unit first developed for the chemical industry but subsequently adapted for food processing. More than 2,000 Rotoform depositors are now used around the world. The Rotoform itself consists of a heated cylindrical stator and perforated rotating shell that turns
