Platform for the food and beverage industry
Zotter's chocolate factory is always open to the public. Therefore, reliably operating systems are extremely important. Conveyor and pump systems, mixers and many other machines are driven by robust geared motors from NORD.
The ingredients of Zotters sweet specialties range from pineapple to lemon, celery to asparagus, coconut to cheese and many more extravagant ingredients. There are 365 flavors in the range at any given time. For most of the wide range, chocolate is an ingredient one cannot live without. Zotter, as one of the few suppliers in Europe, produces it entirely in-house - and the only one exclusively from organic fair trade ingredients.
The concept and construction of the chocolate production at Zotter are the work of the Swiss process engineering company Bühler. Gearmotors from NORD DRIVESYSTEMS reliably provide the:
The production of chocolate involves several steps. Ingredients and mixtures in various forms often remain in motion almost continuously for many hours and days. Reliable drive systems take care of this. At the Zotter Chocolate plant in southeastern Austria, durability and high operational reliability are doubly important. First of all, a trouble-free process is important for the quality of the final product. In addition, visitors can watch the production daily, so breakdowns should not occur.
Focus on reliability - Up to 3,000 people visit the Zotter factory every day. That's several hundred thousand on an annual basis. From a platform high above the production area, they can watch uninterrupted roasters and crushers, scales and mixers, presses and conches (chocolate mixing machines). This makes production simultaneously a showroom, where an installation may never come to an unplanned halt.
Loadable and interference-free - From the cocoa bean to the finished product, there is grinding, mixing, stirring, pumping, filling and vacuuming. These diverse tasks involve various loads and modes of operation, but all plants have in common that they need robust drive technology for trouble-free operation. Moreover, geared motors that meet these requirements should preferably come from a supplier that can help resolve any malfunctions quickly and effectively.
Zotter uses numerous geared motor variants from NORD DRIVESYSTEMS for chocolate production throughout the plant. At the start of production, transport drives from NORD transport cocoa beans between the cleaning, roasting and disinfection plant. A grinding machine with a NORD geared motor then produces a liquid mass from the cocoa nibs. Pumps with NORD drives transport it to a mixer, where sugar and other ingredients are added.
Innovative drive construction - The mixing is then ground and compressed in a roller machine. Compression is done with a compressor driven by a NORDBLOCK.1 geared motor gearbox. With this drive design, gears can be inserted and mounted through the bearing openings, so that the bearings are offset at an otherwise equal shaft spacing. The shaft is also larger than in other "Blockgehäuse" systems. As a result, the systems can be loaded more effectively. In addition, they are more durable, as wear due to radial and axial forces is minimal.
Drives in all sub-processes - Transport drives move the thickened intermediate product through five rollers to further processing. Even in the final stage of production, NORD drives have an important task in conveying, stirring and pumping, including during filling and when vacuuming the conche.
