By Peter Poulsen, International Sales Manager, Bakery & Confectionery, Palsgaard A/S. Thanks to food ingredients producer Palsgaard, there’s now a new and highly effective avenue to explore potential savings and expand profit margins. Called Palsgaard® AMP 4455, it’s a new chocolate emulsifier that meets or exceeds the effects of lecithin at vastly reduced dosages. And it’s enabling Palsgaard’s chocolate producing customers to take back control of their costs. COST REDUCTIONS HIT THE WALL After years of hard-won progress on the cost-efficiency side of chocolate production, chocolate manufacturers might be forgiven for thinking they’ve finally hit the wall – that they are at the whim of the cocoa butter traders and that further cost savings are thus beyond their control. UNCERTAIN FUTURE The chocolate industry is faced by a very uncertain future, with much speculation around the supply and demand for cocoa. Will there be enough supply in the coming years? Have the prices of cocoa butter reached their peak? Already today, with the prices of cocoa butter and other cocoa ingredients steadily climbing, industry profits margins are squeezed more tightly than ever before. Little wonder then, that the management of many chocolate manufacturers is asking whether all possible potential savings have been identified in their recipes. And they’re not always satisfied with the answers. PALSGAARD TO THE RESCUE Figure 1: Cocoa butter savings achieved by replacing lecithin with Palsgaard® AMP 4455. Amount of Palsgaard® AMP 4455 required to achieve a 30%-fat milk chocolate 0.6 Palsgaard® AMP 4455, which is essentially ammonium phosphatide (also known as AMP, Emulsifier YN or E442), has been developed as a powerful alternative Yield value (YV) deto lecithin. It’s fines the force needed to initiate a flow in a just as easy to non-Newtonian fluid use, but outsuch as chocolate. performs leciThe YV is typically imthin in reducing portant when working at low shear as e.g. the chocolate’s moulding/vibrating. plastic viscosity and yield value Plastic Viscosity – using as little (PV) defines the force needed to maintain as 40 percent a constant flow in a of the normally chocolate. The PV is applied dosimportant when workage. ing at medium to high 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 Using lecithin in chocolate at a dosage of around 0.4 percent normally provides cocoa butter or vegetable fat savings of around 4 percent. At the same dosage level, however, Palsgaard® AMP 4455 can extend these savings by an additional 2 to 3 percent to create a total potential saving of 6 to 7 percent. 31 32 33 34 OUT-SAVING LECITHIN shear such as in the enrobing process. 0 Total fat % of a milk chocolate using 0.4% lecithin In the above example, a manufacturer producing milk chocolate with 33% total fat using 0.4% soy lecithin switches to using 0.37% Palsgaard® AMP 4455. The result is a product with 30% total fat, saving 3% on expensive cocoa butter yet maintaining the same rheology. A manufacturer producing a 34% fat product could dose 0.48% Palsgaard® AMP 4455 in order to save 4% on cocoa butter. While actual savings may vary over time due to fluctuating raw material prices and the different qualities of ingredients in use, reducing cocoa butter usage by an additional 2-3 percent could be expected to translate to savings of
Download PDF fil