Olympic-Hermes has built up a strong presence in its local market with a range of toffees, die formed candies, chews and jelly products. Trials in the APV Baker Innovation Centre at Peterborough, UK convinced them that adding a depositing line to their production facilities would create growth in both home and export markets.
The plant installed at Olympic-Hermes includes a Microfilm cooker, depositor and cooling tunnel, plus three optional systems that enhance end product capability - milk/cream injection, colour/flavour addition, and a sugar-free skid. The company now has the ability to make solid confectionery, two-colour striped confectionery, hard confectionery with a soft centre and fruit, milk and cream-based confectionery.
All of these options can be produced as conventional sugar products, or in sugar-free versions. Indeed, the majority of new APV Baker depositing plants are now supplied with a sugar-free option, enabling confectioners around the world to meet the rapid rise in demand for low fat foods.
The installation at Olympic-Hermes reflects APV's global reach and is an example of how successful the firm has been in capturing new markets. This has been achieved partly through the aggressive marketing of its food production equipment, where significant costs reductions have been made.
The company recently announced for example that its single zone Flexiflame burner for biscuit ovens will be 25 per cent cheaper and prices for the five-zone version will be slashed by 35 per cent in an effort to get more new customers.
The company said price cuts had been made possible through "supply chain efficiencies" and not changes to the product. Price cuts by one of the world's biggest premium equipment suppliers are likely to reverberate down the market. Innovation is another key theme. Within the confectionery sector, APV Baker recently developed a new range of ServoForm depositors for the production of hard and soft confectionery, toffees, gums, jellies and lollipops.
The system has been designed to give manufacturers complete control of the depositing process to ensure complete shape and weight accuracy, negligible scrap rates and efficient wrapping. Greater flexibility and improved process control have been made possible by the installation of servomotors to control machine movements.
The company has also developed a depositing system capable of multi-colour and multi-component production. Four-colour depositing aims at giving the freedom to create a diversity of hard candies, which the company says can give high added value for a variety of effects including both random 'marbling' and deliberate patterns.
The technology, for which the company says a patent is pending, involves a 'one-shot' deposit from a bank of four hoppers, each containing a different coloured candy syrup. Furthermore, mould shape is said to be unlimited.