Candies had been around since between the 6th and 4th century BCE. Ancient India (read more) was the first country to truly make candies by boiling sugarcanes into juices. Before the industrial revolution, candies were treated as medicine used to relieve sore throats. In the middle ages, only wealthy families could enjoy sweet treats.
But when the industrial revolution occurred, there was an increased market with children as their target customers. As you may have guessed, candies are bought for children at a price of a penny.
In modern times, confectionery has evolved with many varieties. Now there are chocolates, hard mint candies, jams, and even jelly that children can enjoy! Confectioners now use machines to help in producing candies like the revolving steam pan that boils sugar. There are many classifications of confectionery nowadays. With this, people now consider having a candy company as their business.
But of course, if someone is planning to mass-produce confectionery, they will need machines to do the production. Now there are many things to consider when planning to produce candies, like the whole process. With technology, this would ease the pain of making candies by hand and make a significant amount of products.
There are a lot of companies that offer top-class machinery and services for your candy factory. One of these companies is called Candy Worx, formerly known as HMC Manufacturing and located in Chicago- run by Roger Hohberger, the company’s president. Candy Worx specializes in manufacturing confectionery, bakery, and cereal-making machinery making candy maker’s lives easier!
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Now, What Machines Are Worth Getting?
Companies offer different kinds of machinery designed for different types of candies, bakery, and cereals. There are some services like installments and software for testing, manufacturing, and product development, depending on which company you are buying from. As for the state-of-the-art machines, here is a list of the items that are worth getting and a sneak peek of what they are all about.
Continuous Cooling Drums
Cooling drums became a standard for local and global companies since it helps with the cooling process of confectioneries. This machine is widely used to cool off high heat cooked syrups (link: https://medium.com/@dranthonypapp/cooling-drums-that-can-give-the-candies-a-right-temperature-before-packaging-fd01e059b8a7) like toffees, caramel, frosting, fondant, solid candy, pure sugar, taffy, and fudge. The drums are usually made out of stainless steel and capable of uniformly cool off the syrups inside.
The cooling drums can produce 230 kilograms of heated syrups per hour to 4550 kilograms per hour depending on their size. The drums can be connected with water pipes and are electronically wired allowing only one utility connection to be needed when being installed. Some cooling drums can be integrated into fully automatic, controlled by software.
As for the “sticky situation” when it comes to sticky candies, the drums can be coated with long-lasting non-stick fluro plates’ hard baled coating. With that said, the cooling drum would be worth getting, as it helps in mass cooling confectionery, saving up time and effort.
Fondant Or Icing Production Machine
These machines are designed to produce nougat, mallows, cereal frosting, confectioners fondants, and bakery icing. These machines are capable of producing uniform-sized sugar crystals in different sizes continuously too. Fondant production machines are made out of stainless steel, similar to the cooling drums to prevent rusting when used for a long time and they can be in many different production sizes. What made this piece of technology worth getting is because it is reliable, although having a specific function, nonetheless, it is a perfect fit for niche needs!
Also, read The Secret to a More Efficient Production Line
Panning Machines
Panning machinery is made to polish or glaze lentils, chocolate, solid chocolate spheres, yogurt, nuts, and hard sugar efficiently. The pans have skids systems for single or multiple pans, increasing productivity when used. The pans have seals or valves at the back that could be manually open and discharge the ingredients from inside. But of course, the pans can also be integrated into fully automatic because of the skids system, which made it useful and non-time-consuming.
Pans, just like other confectionery equipment, have different sizes to choose from, plus many features. These features can include a fully-automated option, soft start, and heavy-duty drives, along with some other niche features from different companies. Lastly, since it polishes chocolates and other candies, pans usually are stainless steel, preventing rusts, we don’t want to taste something rusty in our chocolate after all!
Is the pain worth it? The answer is yes. With pans doing all the polishing work, it saves you time and effort. Plus, productivity-wise, pans are designed to mass polish, making it a must-have item if you plan to make your candies.
Belt Coating
Belt coating technology uniformly coats nuts, pretzel chunks, raisins, dried fruit, and coffee beans with coatings such as white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, and yogurt. Belt coating technology is optimized to reduce time and labor costs, making it must-have equipment for global and local companies. This also helps in making your candies look more pleasing to the eyes.
Pure Sugar Cooking
Pure sugar cooking technology is another must-have technology for candy companies. Pure sugar cooking machines are structured to quickly cook pure sugar syrup in humidity and steamed vapor, then cool off in the cooling drum. The product outcome then conveys to other equipment for further processing. This technology minimizes the exposure of sugars in high temperatures with its shell in stainless steel.
Prevention of sugar browning is another plus of the machine, making it look like a clear crystal after cooking. These machines can produce delicious candies like mint sticks, puffed mints, and striped mint balls. It is also one of the start-up machines when producing candies as it cooks the sugar.
But it all boils down to why it is worth it. Cooking sugar to perfection is hard and needs a lot of skill and time to produce beautiful products. But with the help of this technology, cooking sugar to perfection is made easy, you can just press a button and now cook sugar. Plus with help of conveyor belts, you do not need to dish out the outcome and put it on the next processing equipment.