An Overview of the Global Confectionery Industry
The global consumption of confectionery is growing steadily, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.
The global confectionery market was valued at $210.3 billion in 2019. It’s expected to reach over $270 billion by 2027, growing at a CAGR at 3.6%, according to a report by Allied Market Research.
With the demand for confectionery continuing to rise, it’s more important than ever that manufacturers of chocolate, candy, and sweets ensure their production facilities are as flexible, fast, efficient, productive, and safe as possible.
This blog article looks at the confectionery industry and explores how liquid product recovery (“pigging”) technology is being incorporated into production plants to improve productivity, flexibility, and profitability.
Increasing Competition in the Confectionery Sector
Despite the demand for confectionery increasing, confectionery manufacturers face the challenge of fierce competition.
Major established players operating in the industry include Mars Wrigley, Mondelez International, Nestlé, Ferrero, Lindt and Sprüngli, Pladis, The Hershey Company, Haribo and others. Most of these companies are HPS customers.
The confectionery industry is also seeing smaller players gaining market share. As a result, to remain competitive, it has become critical for confectionery manufacturers to keep their production facilities up-to-date and leverage technology that can meet ever-evolving consumer preferences.
One of the technologies being leveraged by confectionery manufacturers is pigging technology. Pigging recovers residual liquid product from the inside of pipelines at the end of a batch run or changeover. The benefits and savings that pigging systems deliver to confectionery processing and production are remarkable.
The Importance of Flexible Manufacturing Equipment
To meet ever-evolving consumer needs and deliver new, on-trend products to supermarket shelves as quickly as possible, confectionery manufacturers are embracing flexible production equipment.
Flexible production equipment refers to equipment being adaptable and responsive to change. In other words, it can handle a wide array of new and existing confectionery options.
In an extremely competitive market, every penny counts. Therefore, it’s extremely critical that confectionery manufacturers choose flexible production equipment such as pigging with high throughput that can change from one production run to another while maintaining productivity and profit margins.
Wide and Diverse Range of Product Offerings
From premium chocolate, popping candy, and high protein bars to citrus flavours, cannabis-infused and ruby chocolate, confectionery manufacturers offer a diverse range of products.
Due to this variety, more changeovers are needed, which typically means added downtime. And the more changeovers there are, the more downtime there is. After all, when you are changing from one product to another, you are not producing products. Ultimately, this means a decline in productivity as well as revenue.
Therefore, confectionery manufacturers need to focus on making their changeovers as quick and efficient as possible. Pigging is an incredibly effective way to speed up the changeover process and increase production uptime.
Proven Solutions for Confectionery Processing and Production
HPS Product Recovery Solutions are the world’s leading experts in pigging and liquid product recovery systems for confectionery processing and production.
Our proven, state-of-the-art pigging solutions are widely used by confectionery manufacturers to increase productivity, enhance production flexibility, and improve profitability.
Other common reasons confectionery manufacturers use HPS pigging solutions are to increase yields, cut waste, help sustainability, improve lot control plus much more.
A Brief Overview on How Pigging Systems Work
Pigging uses a specialist projectile (the ‘pig’) to recover usable product from pipelines. The pig has a diameter slightly larger than the pipeline that is transporting the liquid.
Therefore, because the pig fits compactly to the pipeline, very little product can get past it. In this way, the pig can easily recover nearly all the product from the pipeline, instead of sending it to waste.
The design of the HPS pig enables it to achieve exceptional recovery rates. In most cases, the pig recovers up to 99.5% of product from full pipelines. However, recovery rates of up to 98.8% are not unheard of in certain applications.
How Pigging Systems Improve Productivity in Confectionery Production
By increasing yields through pigging, this reduces the amount of waste generated. In this way, HPS pipeline pigging products makes the changeover and cleaning process much quicker and more efficient.
Without a pigging process, the changeover process is usually extremely time-consuming, wasteful, and a hindrance to productivity. After all, cleaning and changeovers are lost production time. They eat into capacity and profit margins.
Vigorous cleaning and sanitation are typically carried out to remove any traces of residue which may contaminate the next product being processed. In many production plants, clean-in-place (CIP) is used to clean the inside surfaces of pipelines in liquid processing equipment. However, more often than not, CIP systems waste substantial amounts of energy, water, and cleaning chemicals. It’s important to note, not all applications use CIP, and water in particular tends not to be used in chocolate production.
Pigging Before Clean-In-Place
Using a pigging process before CIP offers major benefits in process efficiency and productivity. Because the pig recovers nearly all of the residue from the pipeline, there is less work for a CIP system to do. Therefore, less cleaning, rinsing, time, and resources are required. In this way, changeovers are much faster and there’s less downtime.
*Please note, in some chocolate applications, instead of CIP, cleaning is carried out my dismantling the equipment and manually scraping and brushing the equipment. Or by using other products such as butter oil. Here’s a blog article which looks at how to clean chocolate transfer pipelines using pigging technology.
Increasing Production Flexibility with a Pigging System
From white chocolate and milk chocolate to dark chocolate and ruby chocolate, pigging systems enable different configurations and formulations of product to be transferred in the same line. This increases the flexibility and capacity of operations.
Although the production line will need to be cleaned and reconfigured between batches, it enables manufacturers to use their equipment as efficiently and productively as possible. In some cases, the pigging process recovers such vast quantities of residue from the pipeline, it is often possible to process the next product instantly after pigging.
In this way, HPS custom pigging systems enable confectionery manufacturers to be more agile in the production process and meet the demand for greater product variety.
Ways Pigging Systems Improve Profitability in Confectionery Processing
By increasing uptime of processing equipment, this means less downtime, higher productivity, and ultimately more revenue.
Pigging systems also save money and improve profitability by increasing yields, reducing waste processing and disposal costs, reducing water use, lowering cleaning and chemical costs, reducing labour costs, improving pipeline process efficiency plus much more. Therefore, pigging systems deliver high return on investment with rapid payback.
Find Out More
The benefits of pigging and liquid product recovery systems are extensive for manufacturers of chocolate and confectionery products.
So, if you are looking to improve productivity, increase profitability and enhance the flexibility of your operations through pigging and liquid product recovery solutions, then please get in touch with HPS, the product recovery specialists.