Moving from lean to green

Kim’s Chocolates N.V.; Annabell Candy Co. and others share stories about manufacturing ‘green’ candies.

Chocolats Halba

Walliselleng, Switzerland

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Chocolats Halba, part of the Swiss Coop Group, had set itself the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by the year 2023. The company’s management recently decided to achieve this target even ten years earlier, by 2013. As a consequence, measures were reviewed at Halba that would help improve the company’s energy balance and thus achieve the lower carbon levels aimed at.

From the start, experts from the Bühler Group were involved in this process to determine the existing savings potential. The result of this audit supplied a clear picture of all energy and production streams. The savings potential calculated for the entire production line amounts totaled 25%.

The measures that are meaningful from a commercial point of view are now gradually being put to practice by Bühler. This enables the costs and the carbon emissions of the entire production process to be appreciably reduced. The high quality and the flavor of the products are retained because every energy optimization effort is tailored to specific processing stages to ensure product integrity.

With more than 30 years experience in B-to-B reporting, writing and editing — the bulk of which was dedicated to covering the bakery, confectionery and snack industries — Pacyniak has chronicled changes within the food industry since the early 1980s. A Boston University journalism degree graduate, he worked for a variety of publications before joining BNP Media in 1994 as editor of Snack Food & Wholesale Bakery magazine. In 2001, he took over as editor-in-chief of Candy Industry until 2018.