Traditionally soft candies / toffee are made using a cooker, then a cooling drum or belt. Maturation follows for hours in a curing room. Or the cooled mass might be fed into a pulling machine or Z-blade mixer. Next the soft candy is manually fed into 1 or more down-stream forming lines; multiple interventions by operators required.

Manufacturers of toffee or other soft candies who are interested in streamlining their current production of soft candies, both in terms of improving the product itself and with increased automation, should know about the Proform MI Intruder.

Christian Gand, Proform’s MD, explains: “An Intruder, installed directly after the cooker, can cool, grain or crystalise, add in ingredients and extrude several ropes, feeding down-stream forming lines. A machine, our Intruder, replaces traditional production equipment: a cooling drum or cooling belt, as well as a pulling machine or a Z-blade mixer. Our intruder machine produces continuously, eliminating intermediate product storage for curing or maturation, traditionally required.”

In other words, the client cooker, connected to an Intruder, is all the process machinery a soft candy manufacturer needs, before the forming equipment. The MI-Intruder has four functions:
1. Taking in and efficiently cooling the hot, soft chew candy or toffee mass coming from the cooking system to the required discharge temperature.
2. In line graining or crystallising, resulting in very homogenous crystallisation at the discharge of the Intruder, and preventing retraction of the candy or toffee mass after discharge.
3. Continuous mixing in of ingredients such as colour, flavour, citric acid, etc. A neutral soft candy mass from the cooker can be fed into the Intruder and the finished product results at discharge.
4. Splitting of the mass into several ropes (up to 6) to continually feed downstream forming equipment. A die plate set can be added that can shape different ropes and rope dimensions to split the throughput capacity according to the downstream requirements.

Manual labour needs are eliminated. With an Intruder, no labour is required to handle the product during the process or to feed it into down-stream forming lines. Mr. Gand continues “With traditional pulling machines, there is always a possibility that lumps of candy take a short-cut through the system, and these lumps mean that the product won’t have the same texture as it should. In comparison, the Intruder has a First in/First out principal and soft candy or toffee cannot take any short-cuts. The result is a very regular, fine texture and product. This in turn ensures optimal functioning of the wrapping machines.”

Ball forming, cut & wrap or die forming lines are some of the downstream forming equipment that can be fed by the Intruder processing line upstream. Gand specifies, “Directly after forming, the finished products can go directly to our client’s wrapping machines or to flow packers, as required by the process.”

An Intruder has no specific requirement to start or to re-start production. As soon as the soft candy or toffee mass enters the machine the process starts. Capacities range from 350 to 1100 kg/h.

No cleaning is required with the Intruder for shutdown and restart when running the same product, even after several days of downtime or more.

For a changeover online, a pre-programmed procedure minimises product loss and can ensure a changeover from dark to light coloured product within less than 3 minutes.