Consumers expect hygienically perfect confectionery, and the confectionery industry attaches great importance to the quality of its products. The cleaning of systems is therefore an important task, since the formation of biofilms and deposits must be avoided for health reasons. The Niederberger Group from Germany offers corresponding services.

Spoiled or microbiologically contaminated chocolates, pralines, waffles and candies have harmful effects on the organism. It is therefore imperative to pay attention to hygiene, the proper treatment of the products and the careful cleaning of systems and system components. Machines, moulds, reusable containers and lines must be brought into a sterile and usable state after the end of a production process. Recurring cleaning also protects against corrosion from product residues and contributes significantly to economical operation.

Manual cleaning is hardly enough, because scooping points, depressions or ribs in moulds and containers make cleaning anything but child’s play. In addition, manual cleaning is time-consuming, inefficient and usually leads to considerable water consumption.

Dry cleaning, foam cleaning, CIP (cleaning-in-place) process: all hygiene processes are used in the confectionery industry. Nevertheless, every production system requires its own approach and gets its own individual cleaning concept. Crumbs and dusts that are produced in the pastry production process are removed using the dry cleaning process, for example. The same generally applies in the field of packaging machines. Water, on the other hand, removes the remains of chocolate products.

The success of cleaning depends on the cleaning agent, which in turn depends on the impurities to be removed, and on the exposure time. The longer this is, the better soiling swells up to be broken down into its dirt components.

Temperature also has an effect on cleaning: if it is too high, the enzyme activity is inhibited, which leads to a reduction in the cleaning effect. The frequency and intensity of the cleaning and disinfection measures in turn depend on the degree of contamination and the sensitivity of the processed food to microbiological and chemical changes.

In addition, cleaning agents must be able to reach all surfaces well to remove dirt and microorganisms. For example, by constantly changing the flow direction of cleaning fluids and also flushing blind lines, the employees of the Niederberger Group prevent microorganisms from settling in dead spaces or in the flow shadow.

The structural conditions of the production systems also have a significant impact on the hygiene measures: with stainless steel housings, a well-thought-out design already ensures maximized hygiene. Pipelines, pumps and tanks must be free of dead spaces and completely emptied so that flushing can be guaranteed. The smoother the surfaces that come into contact with products, the less product residues, microorganisms and dirt can stick to them. Surfaces with a low roughness of less than 1 µm and careful brushing in the direction of the drip form the ideal conditions for the drainage of liquids.

Intensive cleaning and disinfection is kept as short and quick as possible from a business point of view, since downtimes of the production facilities should be avoided or at least minimized. In the confectionery industry, the Niederberger Group generally works with a combination of conventional cleaning methods, here mechanical and manual dry cleaning as well as the CIP process.

In a closed cleaning system, the cleaning solution circulates in the systems and thus enables fully automatic cleaning and disinfection. The former, time-consuming dismantling of entire systems, in which individual components were cleaned before they were reassembled, is a thing of the past. In a process environment as modern as it is in the confectionery industry, CIP is hardly dispensable.

Water-free and surface-friendly cleaning with dry ice, in which thermal and mechanical effects are used, is indispensable, especially for sensitive components: CO2 pellets in the form of dry ice are shot at high speed at the surfaces to be cleaned. This causes an immediate cryoshock. As a result, residues and surface material expand at different speeds, making the dirt brittle. The impact of the pellets does the rest: the accompanying compressed air flow effortlessly removes the brittle residues. The big advantage: there are no additional waste products. The pellets dissolve in gas and thus get back into the atmosphere, and only the removed production residues have to be disposed of.

Since this is a waterless cleaning process, drying is not required, which reduces the downtime of systems. They can even go back into production immediately after cleaning. For the time being, however, the disinfection of systems and surroundings follows in order to achieve the highest level of hygiene. The number of germs and pathogens is reduced to a level at which they can no longer endanger products. It is important that no residues of the disinfectant remain, since if they get into production, they can have harmful consequences.

At Niederberger, each cleaning team is headed by an object manager. He is the interface between customer and employee and works closely with the hygiene management of the companies. In this way, cleaning can be integrated as much as possible into the production processes, and production downtimes can be kept as short as possible.

In order to increase hygiene safety, object managers also carry out the so-called contact test at the end of each cleaning: in order to determine the contamination, cleaned surfaces are subjected to a microbiological check by wiping a strip of nutrient solution over the cleaned surface. Ten germs per square centimetre are considered harmless. However, the aim of every cleaning is to be able to detect significantly fewer germs. The documentation of cleaning and disinfection work creates an additional level of hygiene safety.