Food Design opens new chocolate panning room

The creator of fudge and toffee inclusions and sauces for the food industry has extended its premises in North Yorkshire by 4000 square feet to offer chocolate coating facilities to the sweet confectionery industry. The company's £150k investment aims is in response to customer demands in the UK and its worldwide markets in continental Europe, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and South Africa. As a result of the investment It expects its exports to increase from 29 per cent of its turnover to at least 35 per cent by the end of the current financial year. Targeting cereal, baker and dessert makers ​ Its target markets are ice-cream manufacturers, breakfast cereal manufacturers, bakery and dessert manufacturers, particularly for decoration, and snack mixes in the UK and worldwide. Food Design's new panning room aims to address the need for bakery manufacturers to constantly innovate in response to shifting consumer trends. Chocolate coating can add value to confectionery products by adding taste and texture while improving the visual impact of the product. Food Design's new air-conditioned and dehumidified chocolate room, which has a full capacity of 800 tons per year, opened in March. Chocolate coating was previously carried out off-site under a co-manufacturing agreement, which has now ceased. The new coating facility offers milk, plain or white chocolate as well as organic or fair trade chocolate coatings. Most of the company's products are suitable for chocolate coating and will be supplied in a random size, Food Design said. A wide range of chocolate covered snacks ​ A standard range of chocolate covered products, such as English toffee crunch, which is popular in the UK, honeycomb, butterscotch, and biscuit balls will be available on a stock basis. The company also pointed out that butterscotch and honeycomb are popular in the UK and Europe, both in their organic and non-organic variant. Chocolate-coated products can be used in small bakery items such as doughnuts, cup cakes, chilled and frozen desserts or in snack mixes, breakfast cereals or sprinkled on top of ice cream. Orders will take 48 hours to 15 days ​ Small deliveries (100 kgs) of standard products, i.e. non-organic butterscotch, honeycomb, and English crunch will take 48 hours from order to delivery, while deliveries of specifically manufactured products will take a maximum of 15 working days, Food Design said. Colin Hunter, managing director, Food Design, told Confectionery News: "The new facility will provide the opportunity for Food Design to develop unusual toffee products for chocolate coating that allow bake stability, which has not previously been available to confectionery manufacturers." Hunter continued: "Organic coating is projected to represent a quarter of all coatings. We still have to receive our first fair trade order, although the company has a fair trade certificate.