Company moves into volume cake market

4 July 2011 – The move from hand made celebration cakes to a continuous plant for high volume production was a big change in marketing strategy for Lightbody.

Lightbody saw great potential in producing cake bars and bite size products and made the leap to continuous manufacturing which, six years on, has exceeded all expectations.

Lightbody entrusted a significant slice of their investment to Sollich UK, who managed the complete design and build of the continuous line. This high specification, bespoke line runs to an impressive 160m in length and comprises a Haas-Meincke 2 zone, indirectly fired Turbu convection oven with a 4100 depositor laying down the base for their famous Thorntons cake bars. Following cooling, a Sollich Conbar sheets a measured layer of tender caramel onto the cake. After further cooling, a slitting and ultrasonic guillotine delivers the individual cake bars in impressive marching order to their 1300mm wide chocolate enrober Enromat M5. A Decormatic housed within the enrober creates an intricate design in white chocolate to distinguish this flagship product. Sollich’s Turbotemper, cooling tunnel and Minitemper complete the line.

The line is currently in production non stop, 14 shifts per week producing 22 different Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) for products such as flapjack, brownie, cake bars and the company’s number one best seller – the Thornton’s caramel shortcake bite.