In Line Filter For High Quality Chocolate At Godiva

Godiva Chocolatier was founded 80 years ago in Brussels, Belgium and supplies its range of high quality “luxury” chocolates in over 80 countries. Using only the finest chocolate and highest quality ingredients, Godiva chocolates are found in some of the most prestigious stores around the world, from Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi Department Store in central Tokyo.

As with many chocolate processes, foil is commonly used to wrap chocolate because of its decorative/luxury appearance and ease of wrapping varying shapes. However, this complicates rework processes, since the foil must be removed beforehand and as a result pieces of foil can contaminate the chocolate.

Godiva identified two areas where foreign bodies could enter the chocolate and looked at how they could eliminate this. Following a visit to their chocolate supplier who were using Russell Finex self-cleaning filtration units, Godiva contacted Russell Finex for a solution. Following an in-depth risk assessment, a combination of both in-line filtration units and circular vibratory sieves were provided, which covered two critical control points within the system.

Two self-cleaning Russell Eco Filters were installed after each storage tank to remove any contaminant from within the tanks that could have been introduced through rework. These chocolate filters were selected due to their high flow rates and innovative self-cleaning design meaning operator involvement is kept to a minimum.

The second control point was just before the depositors. A bank of Russell Compact Sieves replaced the two existing sieving units, working in tandem with the in-line filters. “The Compact 400 sieves were chosen as they fitted neatly into our existing process without losing the cleanability of the depositors” states Peter Van Ingelghem, Engineering and Maintenance Manager at Godiva.