Despite fewer visitors due to the worldwide pandemic, the first participation of Brabender GmbH & Co. KG’s in ProSweets Cologne last week from 30 January to 2 February was successful: “We had many good discussions about our applications and learned a lot about the needs of customers in the confectionery and snack industries. For one interested visitor, we carried out a viscosity measurement of chocolate in our rotational viscometer, the ViscoQuick, directly on site”, says Adrian Jaspers, Sales Manager Food & Feed Europe at Brabender.

Innovative measuring concept of the Convimeter II

A team from Brabender GmbH & Co. KG presented not only the TwinLab-F 20/40 twin-screw extruder for product and process development on a laboratory scale, the MT-CA moisture analyzer and the ViscoQuick rotational viscometer, but also the latest measuring device: “The new Convimeter II is suitable for inline measurement of viscosity, e.g. of chocolates and fillings for bakery as well as snack products, during the production process. Small deviations in viscosity become visible so that material raw material waste and time losses in the ongoing production process can be avoided”, explains Jaspers. The Convimeter II enables many measurement methods previously reserved for offline rheology to move into production environments and supports large-volume testing on a production scale.

Applications for chewing gum production

Brabender also offers suitable application solutions for chewing gum: “At the trade fair we had enquiries about extruding chewing gum with our TwinLab-F 20/40 twin-screw extruder, and with the help of our measuring kneader we can reproduce the human chewing process during chewing gum chewing. After adding artificial saliva with enzymes, the stability of the chewing gum can be determined via the torque”, summarises Michael Landers, application engineer at Brabender.

The TwinLab-F 20/40 twin-screw extruder in laboratory format can be used flexibly in product development as well as in the optimisation of recipes and offers many possibilities for product innovations: “With the extrusion, new developments of snack products, breakfast cereals as well as dough or confectionery can be prepared on a laboratory scale. By varying the parameters of screw speed, temperature and shear in their interaction during extrusion, innovative food products become possible”, Landers explains. Examples include chewing gum without plastic, chocolate rice and lupine flips.

In the following video interview, Sales Manager Adrian Jaspers talks about his first participation in the ProSweets Cologne trade fair and about Brabender’s applications and plans in the confectionery and snack sector: