HYGIENIC SOLUTIONS T
he European Hygienic Engineering & Design Group (EHEDG) is an international non-profit organisation that promotes safe
food by developing guidelines and standards for the hygienic design of equipment used in food and beverage production. EHEDG was founded in 1989 and its members include food producers, equipment manufacturers, research institutions, and public health authorities. It offers a certification program for equipment that meets its standards through testing by authorised laboratories and is considered to provide best practice guidelines on hygienic design. EHEDG has created a Chocolate Working
Group to address the specific hygienic design issues in this sector. The group includes a large team comprised of experts in chocolate across chocolate producers, cleaning companies, equipment manufacturers, universities and consultants. “We have prioritised equipment based on the biggest hygiene challenges and will provide guidance on design and cleaning in this sector. We hope to publish a first document in the first half of 2026,” said Dr Matilda Freund, Co-Lead on the Chocolate Working Group. “At the same time, we are thinking about the future of chocolate processing and what can be done moving forward to improve efficiency and effectiveness.”
Highlighting what she considers to be the
most common hygienic design challenges in chocolate production, Matilda pointed to the cleaning of chocolate lines. “Chocolate has a low water activity and water has traditionally been avoided in its processing facilities,” she said. “For this reason, cleaning is often a combination of manual teardowns coupled with pushing material through the line to physically remove product. These methods are labour intensive and time consuming.” Focussing on another hygiene design challenge Matilda highlighted the issue of identifying foreign material. “It is difficult to screen finished products for foreign material due to the nature of chocolate itself as well as the fact that chocolate products often contain inclusions, such as nuts, biscuit pieces, and dried fruit. As a result, removal of natural contaminants from the product stream and preventing entry of new foreign material needs to be an area of focus.”
A pigging solution Maintaining a hygienic environment is crucial during chocolate production, but cleaning chocolate transfer pipelines does come with some unique challenges, and traditio nal cleaning methods can fall short. While Clean-in-place (CIP) systems are
commonly used across the confectionery manufacturing industry, these systems use
Using the next product: Some
GOOD HYGIENE STARTS WITH GOOD DESIGN. EQUIPMENT OR FURNITURE THAT INCLUDES UNNECESSARY LEDGES,
CREVICES, OR POOR WELDS CAN QUICKLY BECOME A TRAP FOR DIRT AND BACTERIA
manufacturers push residual product out of the pipes with the next batch. This practice results in high product loss and contamination risks. The process of using butter, oil and the next
product to clean pipelines typically begins with oil being flushed through the pipeline to remove residual chocolate. This is often followed by a butter flush to remove the oil. While oil can sometimes be reused, butter usually cannot. Given the high cost of these ingredients, this method is far from ideal. Alternatively, some manufacturers use the
water, chemicals, and resources to sanitise pipes and equipment. But, as we know, water and chocolate do not mix. When chocolate – especially high-cocoa-content varieties – comes into contact with water, it can seize, thicken, or solidify, rendering the product unusable and leading to waste. On the plus side, chocolate lines don’t need
cleaning as frequently as other confectionery lines because the product contains virtually no moisture, which makes it less susceptible to bacterial degradation. However, chocolate production lines do still need to be cleaned, and labour-intensive cleaning methods are often employed. These can include: Manual cleaning: Dismantling and manually
scraping equipment, which is tedious and time-consuming. Using butter or oil: Flushing residual
chocolate with butter or oil, followed by additional cleaning stages. While effective, this process wastes costly ingredients.
chocolate mass from the next production batch to clean the line. This involves pushing out the residual chocolate with fresh product before starting the new production run. While this approach avoids butter or oil usage, it also leads to significant product loss and waste, which can be costly, especially when the cost of chocolate continues to increase. To combat these challenges, HPS suggests
the use of pigging technology instead. It argued that hygienic pigging systems can recover up to 99.5% of product from pipelines, helping to reduce waste. Pigging sees a flexible projectile or ‘pig’ being sent through the pipeline (usually automatically), recovering residual chocolate by pushing it to a destination filler or tank. By efficiently clearing pipelines, pigging
systems also enable faster changeovers, eliminating the need for manual cleaning or dismantling equipment. Supporting a hygiene culture
Every surface, fitting, and process has a part to play in maintaining product safety in confectionery and chocolate manufacturing – from sticky residues to sugar dust, the risk of microbial contamination must never be underestimated. The selection of equipment
NOVEMBER 2025 • KENNEDY’S CONFECTION • 29 JULY 2025
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