Production seeking to follow the UN’s sustainability goals.
Photographs: Aasted Aps
Text: Mariano Anthony Davies
Aasted is a Danish-based, consolidated family-owned company that has developed machines to produce chocolate, bakery sector and confectionery for over 100 years (1917).
After the Second World War, Aasted was the first company to develop belt-driven machinery for chocolate production and quickly became a world leader. Fifty years later, the company added bakery and confectionery machinery to its core competencies.
Since 1917, Aasted has been on a continuous journey to provide its customers with innovation, quality and custom-made solutions for effective chocolate production.
What is enrobing machinery?
Enrobing is the process of coating a certain product with chocolate, whether it is dark, milk or white chocolate. Enrobing can also be done with caramel, sugar icing and fondant – depending on what final product is sought.
Enrobing of a product starts with a product on a feed band. The Enrober maintains the chocolate at a constant temperature ensuring a homogeneous mass and pumps it into a flow pan. The chocolate then flows from the pan into a chocolate curtain, completely coating the product passing through. These enrobing machines allow the coating of various masses, such as caramel and sugar.
SuperNova Orbit
The SuperNova Orbit has been developed for the crystallisation and aeration of fat. It allows for the solid mass in production to be transferred to open hopper wire cutters and extruders without any precooling on conveyor belts.
Consequently, it provides easier handling of product and mass that are pumpable, homogeneous and ready-to-use. In addition, production time is minimised with less waste compared to traditional systems.
Aasted-Nielsen Enrober
The Enrober represents an innovative and effective approach to the challenges of chocolate coating. The machinery is available with revolutionary patented energy-saving technologies that run 24/7 - an energy-saving chocolate coating concept that deviates from traditional methods. It eliminates all the hassle of long changeovers and equipment cleaning. Simply take out the interior unit on air skates, insert a new unit and the machine is ready for a new enrobing process.
Tempering chocolate production
Aasted has developed an Energy Enrobing Concept that deviates from other traditional enrobing methods by having a direct injection of tempered chocolate. The Energy Enrobing Concept enhances the output and extends the shelf life of the products. This concept also results in significant energy savings compared to traditional tempering machines.
The tempering index and mixture temperature are kept at a constant level to give the enrobed layer a perfect and stable thickness. This results in a beautiful gloss and provides the product with a good break. In other words, combining a Nielsen Energy Enrober with a SuperNova Energy Tempering Machine results in a perfect environment for having the best possible crystallisation while achieving remarkable energy savings.
High-capacity baking
Since 2009, Aasted has been developing and continuously innovating bakery tunnel oven solutions with their Conny ovens. Their Conny ovens are sophisticated bakery production lines that result in the finest outcome in an efficient and innovative manner.
The baking tunnel oven series Conny provides the highest quality output - regardless of the heating method. These baking ovens come with indirect forced convection, direct, electrical or hybrid heating technology.
The Conny bakery tunnel ovens make it possible to mass produce any baking products. In addition, they can be combined with many of their machines for optimising, decorating or developing final products.
Sustainable production
Aasted’s efforts to increase levels of sustainability throughout their production, sales and aftersales services have been recognised and have won them awards – a result of the company strategy “Challenge to Win”. In February 2021, Aasted also announced its UN Global Impact Programme membership.
This global Danish family business has an AAA1 credit rating, a DKK 5 billion annual revenue, a 38,5% solvency ratio, office locations on four continents and supplies its machinery to over 230 production companies worldwide.