FDBusiness.com

The French company STATICE designs and produces customised systems for industries wanting to monitor their processes, especially the food processing industry. Confectionery companies pay close attention to process quality and repeatability. In order to improve the quality of their chocolate, the supervision of the pre-crystallization of chocolate is essential.

STATICE has been developing tempering measurement systems for the chocolate industry for five years. Two types of tempermeters are offered.

The EXOTHERM SMART, which is a manual tempermeter, provides easier monitoring of chocolate tempering by sampling the chocolate in an aluminium cup, which possesses good thermal transmission. The temperature sensor is heated before and after the sample measurement, thus keeping the same temperature and increasing repeatability while avoiding false negatives. Data that is collected provides slope, temperature, time and RSI. The user can follow the curve in time on the colour screen, and results are printed to assure traceability. The machine can be configured to the production parameters of each user. It is portable, weighs 5.5 kg and is very easier to handle.

The EXOTHERM IN-LINE tempermeter assures an automatic monitoring of chocolate. It incorporates a PC user unit, 1 to 4 measuring heads, and 1 to 5 sensors for the tunnels. Installed directly in the production line on the up going flow, the measuring head takes samples every 15 minutes. The sample is cooled down for the measure, re-heated and pulled back into the flow. This automatic control of the production gives traceability and continuous improvement with storage of the data and statistic tools.

The PRALINE SMART controls the cooking of pralines with an infrared sensor. The temperature is supervised on a colour screen, big bright signs allow a control at distance and an alarm indicates the end of the cooking to the user. Data is printed on the integrated printer.