Hosokawa Bepex carries a comprehensive offering of machines for the confectionery industry and is well known for its cooking systems, mass preparation, forming, cutting, enrobing and cooling. One of Hosokawa Bepex’s core competencies are complete bar line systems.

Chocolate enrobers are complex machines, given the number of parts that come in contact with the chocolate. Therefore, enrobers are typically hard to clean and mass changeovers take a long time when cleaning is required between changes.

Hosokawa Bepex has developed a new concept, dubbed Chocoat, for quick mass changeovers. The enrober is divided into a lower machine body and a roof section. For changing the mass, the lower machine body is removed from the line and replaced by a second one which contains the new mass type.

This ensures that all parts that are in contact with the chocolate mass are removed from the line and no cleaning is required when changing masses. Also contamination of the enrobing mass by cleaning agents or other enrobing mass colors is avoided.

At the stop of production the first enrobing mass is pumped back into the day tank. The now unused lower machine body is rolled into a parking station. Here the machine is covered and kept at production temperature so that the remaining chocolate is kept in liquid state.

The second lower machine body is rolled into the line and connected. The enrobing machine is filled with chocolate from the tempering machine and the chocolate is recirculated to flush remainders of untempered chocolate out of the machine.

A mass change only takes about 35 minutes from production stop to start with the new enrobing mass. Since no cleaning is required, this process is quicker and more efficient than traditional mass changeover systems.

For more information, please see www.hosokawa-bepex.com