Enrobing Thomas Tunnock’s famous teacakes
9 August 2011 – Boyd Tunnock is the third generation of his family to continue the Tunnock’s famous caramel wafer and teacakes factory in Uddingstone, founded by his grandfather in 1890.
Under Boyd’s stewardship, investment in the best industrial manufacturing solutions has maintained Tunnock’s dominant market position.
His 11th line of Sollich chocolate enrobing plant, has just been commissioned on the famous chocolate teacakes.
The Turbotemper tempering machine on the line is a first in his factory to be fitted with the automatic Tempergraph. This gives chargehand Robert Bellingham a continuous check on the degree of temper in his chocolate, which is an important control of the chocolate viscosity and the finished weight of the product.
Chocolate enrober Enromat M5 features a facility to enrobe the teacake ‘bottom up’. When the succulent mallow is deposited on the biscuit base there is an undercut which, if coated ‘top-down’, traps air around the base which blows a hole in the chocolate coating and is detrimental to its shelf life. On the Enromat M5, the bottom roller applicator rotates contra-flow to the belt. It is a patented feature which not only creates a very equal thickness of chocolate across the width but also produces a bottom bath ahead of the top flow pan. The naked teacakes settle themselves into this bath, progressively expelling the entrapped air in the undercut, prior to being top-coated. A 30m Sollich thermo-flow chocolate cooling tunnel ensures a high gloss, hard protective shell is established for this delicate product ahead of the fully automatic foil wrapping and robotic packaging solution from the Schubert company.
