Third-party chocolate manufacturer Marasu's Petits Fours has installed a new £200,000 tablet wrapping line in its London factory, used to apply foil and paper but also able to handle individual cartons.
The Sweet Magic wrapper from Italian company FIMA is packing mini bars (up to 25g) and larger bars (up to 75g) for Prestat's Choxi+ brand. The machine will run at speeds up to 140 parts per minute wrapping mini-bars envelope-style. Choxi+ is marketed on the basis of its high antioxidant content, and is currently stocked by Boots and Tesco (and Waitrose from October).
"The machine provides a lot of options, but you need new tooling for each size, and that doesn't come cheap," says md Bill Keeling. So it is a matter of matching new business with capacity for given formats and sizes. "We have 14 of our 25 staff packing product, and because we're a fast-growing company, there are no redundancies as a result of this installation."
According to Keeling, with multinational confectionery companies tending to move production overseas, this is the only machine of its kind in the UK, and the only one that has recently been installed outside Eastern Europe.